Truesee's Daily Wonder

Truesee presents the weird, wild, wacky and world news of the day.

Monday, December 20, 2010

 

Obama has strong first- half finish

LA Times

NEWS ANALYSIS

Obama has strong first-half finish

 

President Obama ends his first two years with image-altering successes; the next two may prove more frustrating.

 

Paul West, Christi Parsons and Lisa Mascaro, Washington Bureau

December 20, 2010

 

Reporting from Washington

 

President Obama is ending the first half of his term the same way he began it — with a storm of activity of impressive, even historic, dimensions. But he may look back on these two often frustrating years as the easy ones.

In the last week, Obama signed into law a deal he forged with Republicans — an $858-billion package of tax cuts and jobless aid — and saw Congress redeem one of his campaign pledges, allowing gays and lesbians to serve openly in the U.S. armed forces. Before this week is out, the Senate could deliver another major victory — ratification of a new arms reduction treaty with Russia.

For all the achievement, it still may not be enough. Obama has two years left to persuade Americans that his approach of compromise and consensus-building is assertive enough to revive the economy and the flagging fortunes of the Democrats.

Arrayed before him will soon be a far more conservative Congress and a continuing slow-motion economic recovery that will likely hang over his head for the next two years.

Still, the year-end victories have gone a long way toward reshaping the image of a president who seemed isolated and out of touch only a month ago after an enormous midterm election defeat.

Obama now looks like a dealmaker who can reach across party lines to get things done and, perhaps, make progress that Americans found lacking when they went to the polls.

The soon-to-depart Democratic-controlled Congress, under prodding from Obama, will likely go down as among the most productive since President Lyndon B. Johnson's Great Society almost half a century ago.

Obama is "a progressive leader who, in fact, understands that politics is all about the art of the possible," Vice President Joe Biden said Sunday on NBC. Both parties, Biden said, had "heard the message" of the election: that voters "want us to reasonably compromise to move the business of the nation forward."

By working closely with Republican leaders over the last few weeks, Obama appears engaged and involved in a way he didn't before. Along the way, he's helped himself with portions of his base and given independent swing voters a reason to take a fresh look.

White House officials were "elated and emotional" after Congress agreed to lift the "don't ask, don't tell" policy for gays in the military, a senior aide said. But otherwise, the internal response to the wins of the last few days has been cautious.

There haven't been Champagne toasts like the one that followed the passage of the healthcare overhaul this year. There wasn't a victorious news release like the one the night the tax-cut package passed, and the president's bill-signing ceremony was a businesslike affair, concluding quickly so the attendees could get back to work.

To be sure, White House officials count the weekend events as important accomplishments. But they also believe this is no time for them to run anything that looks like a partisan victory lap.

Obama's aides realize that, like the Hawaiian vacation he was forced to curtail, recent victories could turn out to be fleeting, as disposable as Christmas wrapping after the presents are opened.

Many parts of the country have yet to pull out of the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. Unless the recovery gathers steam, the public's mood will remain dark and Obama's reelection will stay in doubt.

"The economy isn't only the No. 1 issue, it's issue one through 10," said Dan Pfeiffer, the White House communications director. "It dwarfs everything else. We have made a ton of progress, but there is much more work to do. The tax-cut package signed into law this week is an important step in that direction."

Meantime, in snow-covered Washington, an incoming, more conservative Congress is itching to undermine the president's achievements and prevent a second term.

Republicans want to starve federal agencies of money needed to implement Obama's agenda and have already succeeded in blocking a plan that would have funded the government into next fall.

Between now and March, a major budget battle will play out, with Republicans determined to cut tens of billions in spending and Obama determined to resist. A silver lining for the president in a divided Congress is that the new Republican House can be counted on to stop any more of the far-reaching legislation that has been less than popular with voters.

Already, there is renewed emphasis, at least rhetorically, on the need for bipartisanship.

Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky said on CNN that "we demonstrated on the tax package there is some business we can do. And if the president's willing to come and adopt positions that, frankly, I and my members hold anyway, why would we say no?"

Communicating with the country — once thought to be Obama's great strength — will be key to his ability to navigate this new reality.

Too often, during the first half of his term, the president allowed Republicans to frame the debate. Even loyal Democratic voters came to adopt the derogatory "Obamacare" label that conservatives successfully stuck to his healthcare legislation.

Now, freed from the need to let Democrats in Congress take the lead, Obama is "in a much better position to stop deferring and start pushing," and that could allow him to communicate more aggressively and effectively, said Dan Schnur, director of the Jesse M. Unruh Institute of Politics at USC.

Opinion surveys show that voters across the political spectrum give the tax deal high marks, which will let Obama do something else he was unable to do before: associate himself with a highly popular initiative.

The lame-duck Congress, for all its remarkable activity, was hardly an unalloyed success for the president. Repeal of "don't ask, don't tell" reassured dispirited Obama backers, including younger voters and gays of all ages, that change was, in fact, possible in Washington. That victory could placate at least a portion of Obama's liberal base, still fuming over his willingness to grant tax cuts to billionaires.

However, the hopes of millions of Latino voters were set back again when the Senate killed a measure over the weekend that would have offered a path to U.S. citizenship to many young people who are in the country illegally.

Candidate Obama had pledged to fix the nation's broken immigration system, but he's probably farther away from delivering on that promise than he was at the start of his term. Instead, he will enter the third year of his presidency without delivering for the nation's fastest-growing minority.

At the same time, his policy of ramped-up border enforcement brewed anxiety among Latinos and other immigrant communities while failing to achieve its political goal of attracting enough Republican support for a change in policy.

At midterm, Obama still faces many of the doubts that have emerged since he took office, including whether he has what it takes to get things done in Washington and make voters believe he understands their problems and is making progress on fixing them.

Obama and his aides contend that's what he's been doing. But the president acknowledged after the midterm election that he had lost track of the way he connected with Americans during the 2008 campaign and that the swirl of activity in the capital had left voters feeling "as if government was getting much more intrusive into people's lives than they were accustomed to."

But if the tax deal succeeds in boosting the nation's tepid economic growth rate next year, as some forecasters predict, the public's pessimistic mood could brighten and lift Obama's reelection prospects along with it, said veteran Democratic strategist Bill Carrick.

"That is the most important political dynamic going into 2012," he said, "that people think the economy is turning around."


Comments:
Wow, they call his finish impressive and historic? I guess it doesn't take much to impress the author.

He managed to get rid of the ban on gays in the military. And what else? The #1 thing he supposedly cared about -- getting rid of the George Bush tax cuts -- did not happen, the prison in Cuba is still open (1 year after he promised it would be closed), he did not get his "cap and tax" law passed, the economy got much worse under his economic policies, he lost an election of truly historic proportions, he got us deeper into the war in Afghanistan and it seems to be getting worse, he couldn't get his "Dream Act" (should be called "Nightmare Act" if you ask me) passed in Congress, he has traveled around the world bowing and apologizing to every world leader, he couldn't convince anyone that so-called global warming exists, and his approval rating is down to 40% in just two short years. Heck, he couldn't even get the Olympic games for Chicago by making a personal appearance. What a lightweight!

The LA Times needs to take a closer look at what they call "News Analysis". It's more like "News Ignoramuses".
These authors are really pouring the Kool-Ade.
Pres Obama has to much written and video history out there on what he and his party wanted to do and did for the news media to be writing articles like this.
Someone check the washer. I think it is stuck on spin cycle.
It's easy to sit back in your comforty chair and make what you call a list of unaccomplished thing, but let you try to do half the thing President Obama has done under the rotten,unworkable attitudes of the Republican. Talk is cheap let some of the naysayer do better in the toxic environment.
Post a Comment

<< Home

Archives

March 2024   February 2024   January 2024   December 2023   November 2023   October 2023   September 2023   August 2023   July 2023   June 2023   May 2023   April 2023   March 2023   February 2023   January 2023   December 2022   November 2022   October 2022   September 2022   August 2022   July 2022   June 2022   May 2022   April 2022   March 2022   February 2022   January 2022   December 2021   November 2021   October 2021   September 2021   August 2021   July 2021   June 2021   May 2021   April 2021   March 2021   February 2021   January 2021   December 2020   November 2020   October 2020   September 2020   August 2020   July 2020   June 2020   May 2020   April 2020   March 2020   February 2020   January 2020   December 2019   November 2019   October 2019   September 2019   August 2019   July 2019   June 2019   May 2019   April 2019   March 2019   February 2019   January 2019   December 2018   November 2018   October 2018   September 2018   August 2018   July 2018   June 2018   May 2018   April 2018   March 2018   February 2018   January 2018   December 2017   November 2017   October 2017   September 2017   August 2017   July 2017   June 2017   May 2017   April 2017   March 2017   February 2017   January 2017   December 2016   November 2016   October 2016   September 2016   August 2016   July 2016   June 2016   May 2016   April 2016   March 2016   February 2016   January 2016   December 2015   November 2015   October 2015   September 2015   August 2015   July 2015   June 2015   May 2015   April 2015   March 2015   February 2015   January 2015   December 2014   November 2014   October 2014   September 2014   August 2014   July 2014   June 2014   May 2014   April 2014   March 2014   February 2014   January 2014   December 2013   November 2013   October 2013   September 2013   August 2013   July 2013   June 2013   May 2013   April 2013   March 2013   February 2013   January 2013   December 2012   November 2012   October 2012   September 2012   August 2012   July 2012   June 2012   May 2012   April 2012   March 2012   February 2012   January 2012   December 2011   November 2011   October 2011   September 2011   August 2011   July 2011   June 2011   May 2011   April 2011   March 2011   February 2011   January 2011   December 2010   November 2010   October 2010   September 2010   August 2010   July 2010   June 2010   May 2010   April 2010   March 2010   February 2010   January 2010   December 2009   November 2009   October 2009   September 2009   August 2009   July 2009   June 2009   May 2009   April 2009   March 2009   February 2009   January 2009   December 2008  

Powered by Lottery PostSyndicated RSS FeedSubscribe