On the one hand, he has more than 1,000 days left in his presidency, which one would think would be enough time to put forth and accomplish a reasonable agenda. On the other, the nation is heading into a midterm election season, which means there are considerable political headwinds to impede progress.

So President Barack Obama, set back on his heels by a contentious and largely unproductive 2013, has decided he can’t afford to wait before making some gains, on the issue of the minimum wage and other areas of particular concern, even if he has to go it alone.

In his fifth State of the Union address Tuesday, Obama told the nation he intends to make wider use of his presidential pen, issuing executive orders that can move the needle, if only incrementally, on his frequently stated primary objectives.

It’s a disappointment, and a sign of failure — both by the president, for neglecting to forge better relationships with lawmakers and show greater leadership when he had a chance to do so, and by an intransigent House and Senate unable to have a meeting of the minds.

An agenda powered by presidential action alone is a weak substitute for laws struck jointly by the executive and legislative branches of government. Executive orders can lapse with the presidential term, and they tend to be small-ball changes that are not equal to the challenges, especially on the economy and job creation, that the country faces.

But they could serve as prompts for future collaboration, even if only to goose a dysfunctional Capitol to come up with legislative compromises in response. And while legislation cobbled together by two branches of government is clearly the American way of doing things, at this point most Americans are so exasperated by their federal government that they would probably welcome action, however modest.

Topping the list was the concern over income inequality, which has been at the center of national discourse over the past year. Obama’s plan is to move by executive order to raise the minimum wage for federal contract workers with new contracts, increasing it from $7.25 to $10.10 an hour.

It’s unlikely that this will affect many people immediately, but this action could have an indirect effect. By raising the bar where he can, Obama is hoping Congress will pick up the baton and raise the federal minimum wage for all.

Considering the frigid relationship between the White House and the Republican-led Congress, this may be considered a vain hope.

But Obama’s executive action has produced ripple effects before, so this strategy should not be dismissed out of hand. By executive order the president already has altered immigration enforcement policy, deferring deportations for illegal immigrants who came involuntarily as children. That action arguably helped to keep immigration reform alive as an issue. Now there’s talk that House leadership may soon move on reform proposals, a notion that the president seemed ready to entertain. Although the piecemeal approach favored by the House is not the comprehensive change the Obama administration and the U.S. Senate had sought, that opening should be exploited.

On other fronts, Obama also is advancing where he believes he can. For example, with no sweeping climate-change legislation on the landscape, the president has to settle on creating new standards on carbon pollution from power plants.

The president spoke a lot about "opportunity" as an economic policy theme. The administration’s aims include reforms to job-training programs to match worker skills to job openings. There are plans for new high-tech manufacturing hubs, in the hope of helping some particularly hard-hit areas.

If he can marshal the forces of the federal government effectively, initiatives like these could be an assist to people who desperately need it. But given Uncle Sam’s stumbles in the initial rollout of the Affordable Care Act, Obama must prove to skeptical Americans that government can work well.

Obama admitted that some of the most pressing issues require congressional action. In fact, many of them do. So the true test of the coming year for Obama remains finding a way to work with Congress.

There may be power in the presidential pen, but engaging in the give-and-take of America’s bruising brand of democracy is still the only course to lasting change.