CHICAGO – There was one Monster of the Midway in the NFCchampionship game and his name was Aaron Rodgers. He ran for a touchdown. He made a touchdown-saving tackle. And he was better than three Bears quarterbacks in leading the Green Bay Packers to the Super Bowl with an ugly-but-beautiful 21-14 victory Sunday over Chicago.

"It's a dream come true," Rodgers said. "It's an incredible feeling. I'm at a loss for words."

Rodgers kept the Bears' defense off balance all afternoon, Green Bay punter Tim Masthay kept Devin Hester under wraps and the Packers' superb defense took care of the rest in knocking the rival Bears out of the playoffs.

It was the 182nd meeting in the league's most historic rivalry, and the stakes had never been bigger.

Now the Packers (13-6) are headed to Dallas. And no matter what happens in the Super Bowl, the Packers and their fans hold ultimate bragging rights over their rivals to the South. The Packers will play the winner of Sunday night's AFC title game between the New York Jets and Pittsburgh Steelers.

All Jay Cutler could do was watch, having left the game with a knee injury early in the third quarter. And with Cutler sitting, little-known backup Caleb Hanie actually made it a game.

Chicago's third-string quarterback rallied the Bears for a touchdown drive to cut the lead to 14-7 after Chester Taylor's 1-yard touchdown run early in the fourth quarter.

Hanie and the Bears had a chance to tie the game after the Bears' defense finally got a few stops, but Hanie threw a ball straight to Packers defensive lineman B.J. Raji, who lumbered 18 yards into the end zone for a touchdown to give the Packers a 21-7 lead.

But Hanie wasn't finished, throwing a 35-yard touchdown pass to Earl Bennett to again cut the lead to seven points with 4:43 left.

The Bears (12-6) forced a punt and got the ball back with under 3 minutes left. Hanie drove the Bears to the Green Bay 29-yard line, then threw a fourth-down interception to Sam Shields — the rookie's second interception of the game.

Now all those Pro Bowl voters who didn't think Rodgers was worthy can relax. They're off the hook.

Rodgers will be busy getting ready for the Super Bowl instead.

Rodgers proved ready for the biggest day of his brief but impressive career as the successor to Brett Favre, even if his final stat line didn't look impressive after an ugly, hard-fought game.

He threw for 244 yards with two interceptions, but his play in the first half put the Bears in a hole as their defense that seemed to fall for every play-action fake.

"You have to give credit to their defense," Rodgers said. "I didn't play my best game. They had a good plan."

It was the latest in a series of big moments for Rodgers, who wasn't named to the Pro Bowl but has earned near-universal praise for the way he has played this season — especially since sitting out the Packers' Dec. 19 loss at New England because of a concussion.

Rodgers has been on a hot streak ever since, and doing it under pressure. The Packers would have been out of the playoffs with a loss in either of their last two regular-season games, including the regular season finale against Chicago.

With the Packers leading 14-0 at halftime, Green Bay's defense forced a three-and-out to begin the second half, and Rodgers went back to marching the Packers down the field.

Rodgers then threw an interception to Brian Urlacher on third-and-goal, ran him down near midfield, and just barely prevented him from running it back for a touchdown by throwing him off balance with his attempt at a tackle.

But the Bears couldn't make anything happen with primary backup Todd Collins in for Cutler, and appeared to be headed for a blowout until Hanie took over.

Packers players were surprised Cutler didn't come back.

"You know if he doesn't come back it had to be serious, not to come back and play in this game," Charles Woodson said.

Packers linebacker Clay Matthews wasn't sure when Cutler got hurt.

"Obviously you expect to get four quarters of play, but who knows what we did to him," Matthews said.

Rodgers was stellar on the Packers' first possession of the game, hitting Greg Jennings for long gains and later finding Jordy Nelson wide open after a play fake for a long completion to set up first-and-goal. Rodgers kept the ball on a bootleg two plays later, stretching the ball over the goal line to put the Packers on the scoreboard first.

But the Packers lost veteran left tackle Chad Clifton to a neck stinger when he collided with a teammate on the touchdown play. Clifton would return midway through the second quarter.

The Bears went with a heavy dose of running back Matt Forte early on, with very limited success.

Green Bay's defense forced the Bears to punt out of their own end zone late in the first quarter — and returner Tramon Williams bobbled the ball, then got it back to give the Packers' offense good field position. Brandon Jackson faked Urlacher out for a long gain on a screen pass, and Rodgers' pass to Nelson set up James Starks' 4-yard touchdown run to give Green Bay a 14-0 lead.

The Bears were in a hole, and even Hanie's unlikely rallies couldn't bring them back.

"Just disappointment," Bears coach Lovie Smith said. "We got into a hole but the guys fought back."

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 WASHINGTON – Nearly two years ago on a cold February day, President Barack Obama stood for the first time before a joint sessionof Congress and spoke of a national day of reckoning.

It was time not just to stabilize the shaken economy, he declared, but to reach for lasting prosperity.

His goals were expansive: overhauling health care, cutting the deficit, improving schools, finding a way out of Iraq and a way ahead in Afghanistan. Most of all, creating jobs. Jobs by the millions.

He had big plans and a Democratic majority in Congress to help him carry them out.

"We will rebuild, we will recover, and the United States of America will emerge stronger than before," Obama said to rousing applause.

Grim as the economic news was at the time, the nation — and Obama — didn't know how bad it was going to get before things started to turn around. The economy hemorrhaged nearly 4 million jobs in 2009, Obama's first year as president.

Two years in to his term, as Obama prepares to stand before Congress once again on Tuesday, he will size up an altered State of the Union.

The economy undisputedly is on stronger footing, though far from robust. There's a new health care law. U.S. troops have come out of Iraq and gone into Afghanistan.

"The most productive two years that we've had in generations," the president pronounces it.

Yet he will speak to a radically reshaped Congress. His party's ranks have been thinned by voters who delivered a harsh verdict in November on two years of collaboration between Obama and the Democratic-controlled House and Senate.

He faces Republicans who are sworn to slash spending by as much as $100 billion as the government comes off an economic rescue effort that has put the country on track for a third consecutive year of $1 trillion-plus deficits.

Ask people whether Obama has delivered on his broad-brush promise of change, and 42 percent — the biggest share — say it's still too soon to tell, according to an AP-GfK poll. One-third say he's failed to deliver; one-quarter think he's kept his promise.

The public is divided, too, on whether Obama is attempting to change things at the right pace, according to the poll. About one-third think he's moving too fast, and almost equal shares think his pace is just right or too slow.

Where do we stand? "I think I'd use the word transitional," says Rutgers political scientist Ross Baker. "There's a sense of expectation on the part of the public. I think it's tinged with hopefulness."

The nation may have weathered its economic crisis, but the same cannot be said for many people.

The unemployment rate was 8.2 percent in February 2009, when Obama first addressed Congress. It hit double digits by that October and was 9.4 percent at last report. While the administration is quick to point out that 1.1 million jobs were created last year, there are 2.8 million fewer jobs now than when Obama took office.

Housing is a particular sore spot. Foreclosures hit a record 1 million in 2010, and this year's figures are likely to be worse.

"I don't think they ever fully got their arms around the factors that were contributing to such an appalling rate of foreclosures and I don't think they've done it yet," says the Brookings Institution's Bill Galston, a former Clinton administration official who gives the president good marks overall for stabilizing the economy.

In Obama's first address to Congress, the president spoke passionately about the inequities and "crushing costs" of the health care system, of families denied treatment or forced into bankruptcy because of medical bills.

Last March 23, after a long and fierce battle, Obama signed into law the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, aimed at expanding coverage to virtually all in this country and preventing insurers from denying coverage to those with health problems.

The political repercussions were immediate and intense. Republicans campaigned against "Obamacare" in the fall elections; Democrats mostly tried to avoid the subject.

On Tuesday, Obama will stand before Congress in the same chamber where House Republicans voted just days ago to scrap the law (knowing their repeal effort would founder in the Senate.)

While the economy commanded Obama's attention, the two wars he inherited tested his resolve as commander in chief. Obama sought an exit strategy in Iraq, the war he had opposed from the start, and an escalation in Afghanistan, the war he thought was just.

The U.S. had about 138,000 troops in Iraq when he took office and 36,000 in Afghanistan.

Two years later, the situation has flipped: There are 47,000 in Iraq, 97,000 in Afghanistan.

All in all, Obama made an astonishing array of promises in his campaign and rededicated himself to them in the early days of his presidency. They ranged from small-bore ones such as his pledge to open American cultural centers in Islamic cities abroad (a promise being kept) to his vow to repeal the Bush-era tax cuts for the wealthy (a promise broken).

To the Heritage Foundation's Brian Darling, Obama has emerged as the "over-promiser in chief."

"Walking into another State of the Union speech," says Darling, "the American people will look at his statements skeptically."

To Galston, Obama's efforts on the economy are the overarching achievement of the first half of his term — and the key to a successful second half.

"The administration's accomplishment in preventing economic disaster has been underestimated and is likely to look better in historical hindsight than it has up to now," Galston says. "The real challenge that he has going forward is to move the patient from stability to recovery. That's the Step Two."