Thwarted on Capitol Hill, stymied in the Middle East and now beset by scandal, President Barack Obama has reached a point just six months after a heady re-election where the second term he had hoped for has collided with the second term he actually has.
Obama emerged from a heated campaign last November with renewed confidence that he could shape the next four years with a vision of activist government as a force for good in American society. But the controversies of recent days have reinforced fears of an overreaching government while calling into question Obama’s ability to master his own presidency.
The challenges underscore a paradox about the 44th president. He presides over a government that to critics appears ever more intrusive, dictating healthcare choices, playing politics with the Internal Revenue Service and snooping into journalists' phone records. Yet at times, Obama comes across as something of a bystander occupying the most powerful office in the world, buffeted by partisanship and forces beyond his control.
On Wednesday, as he announced the departure of the acting director of the IRS, he portrayed himself as an onlooker to the scandal, albeit one with the power to force changes. “Americans have a right to be angry about it, and I’m angry about it,” he said.
'Brazen politics'
He likewise had nothing to do with the justice department seizure of phone records of reporters for the Associated Press, aides say. The Benghazi dispute, he complains, is brazen politics, and the White House released emails on Wednesday meant to show that the president's close aides had little involvement in its most hotly debated aspect.
He has no way to force Congress to pass even a modest gun-control Bill, aides say, while the slaughter in Syria defies US capacity to intervene.
All of which raises the question of how a president with grand ambitions and shrinking horizons can use his office. Obama may be right about some of the things he cannot do, but he has also struggled lately to present a vision of what he can do.
On Wednesday, the administration appeared to take a newly aggressive tack on three current imbroglios, pushing out the head of the IRS, releasing the Benghazi emails and announcing that it would revive legislation to protect journalists from legal jeopardy.The most obvious larger area for progress is immigration, where Republicans appear to want to reach a deal to improve their standing with Latino voters. Aides hold out hope for reaching a budget deal, resuscitating gun control and using executive authority to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. And Obama can shape policy by putting his health care programme into effect, nominating federal judges and a Federal Reserve chairman, and withdrawing more troops from Afghanistan.
Second terms have long vexed presidents, whether it was the Iran-contra affair for Ronald Reagan or impeachment for Bill Clinton. Yet presidents have made breakthroughs in their second term amid congressional investigations. Reagan signed a nuclear arms treaty with the dying Soviet Union, and Clinton balanced the budget. Bush defied broad opposition to a troop surge in Iraq, fuelling a turnaround there.
For Obama, the sharp drop in the projected deficit, announced on Tuesday by the Congressional Budget Office, served as a reminder that if he finishes his term with a healthier economy, it may matter more to his legacy than this week’s setbacks.
Exasperated
In private, Obama expresses exasperation and has talked longingly of "going Bulworth", a reference to a little remembered 1998 Warren Beatty movie about a senator who risked it all to say what he really thought. While Beatty's character had neither the power nor the platform of a president, the metaphor highlights Obama's desire to be liberated from what he sees as the hindrances on him.
“Probably every president says that from time to time,” said David Axelrod, another longtime adviser who has heard Obama’s movie-inspired aspiration. “It’s probably cathartic just to say it. But the reality is that while you want to be truthful, you want to be straightforward, you also want to be practical about whatever you’re saying.”
The cinematic allusion seems striking given Obama’s rejection of Hollywood’s version of the White House, what one former aide calls “the Harry Potter theory of the presidency,” which suggests that he could wave a wand and make things happen.
This week, as Obama confronted a scandal frenzy unlike any he has faced, he let his guard down during fundraisers in New York. “My thinking was after we beat them in 2012, well, that might break the fever,” he told donors. “And it’s not quite broken yet.”
He sounded almost plaintive in wishing he had more ability to advance his agenda. “I sure want to do some governing,” he told another set of contributors. “I want to get some stuff done. I don’t have a lot of time.”
Still, as he was travelling on Marine One on Monday Obama took note of news reports describing last Friday as a terrible day. "You know what was actually a terrible day?" an aide recalled him saying. "The day Benghazi actually happened." – ( New York Times )