Fatigued' Obama Doesn't Need Congress -- American Thinker, M. Catharine Evans

[bsteadman]

Fatigued' Obama Doesn't Need Congress

American Thinker
M. Catharine Evans
6/3/2014

Excerpt:

Politico has published a disturbing account of the president and his plans for the next two years in a piece entitled “The Obama Paradox.”

Once again, Obama is the innocent bystander, bullied by his enemies and isolated through no fault of his own. Politico’s portrayal of Obama as the eternal victim is an effective ploy. With the media behind him, he can proclaim that the Republicans are picking on him and that the only way to stop them is to take matters into his own hands.

The president’s political world is more and more beyond his command. Instead, it is driven by Republicans in Congress, potentially power-shifting Senate races in states where Obama isn’t welcomed to campaign, and to speculation centered on Hillary Clinton’s agenda — not his own.

According to Politico, Obama also told aides that “losing the Senate to Republicans would make his last two years unbearable[.] … 'I don’t really care to be President without the Senate.'” Which raises the question, will he step down if Democrats lose the Senate in 2014? - (bold and color emphasis added)

Paradoxically, Politico suggests, Obama is at his best when he is down for the count. When it looked as if 2013 would be a bust with the disastrous ObamaCare website rollout and no movement on immigration reform or gun control, Mr. Obama rallied his despondent troops. He told them that “the presidency is the most powerful force on the planet,” so why not treat it that way?

…this was classic Obama, who is usually at his sharpest while trying to claw out of a major hole. As Denis McDonough, Obama’s chief of staff, said in an interview, “Hungry tiger fights best right now, and he is one hungry dude. You feel it, and you can’t help but kind of get into that even if you are going through the pretty grim days of October and November.’’

Spurred by these sessions and senior staff meetings, the White House developed a calendar of go-it-alone actions that the president could unveil, a mix of executive orders, public-private partnerships, summits and presidential memoranda to show that Congress hadn’t rendered him irrelevant.

This is what we’ll be doing for the next three years,” said Jennifer Palmieri, the White House communications director, who participates in weekly meetings convened by Pfeiffer to keep the schedule on track. “You can’t do that when you are tied to Congress.”

Jon Favreau, Obama’s former speechwriter, said the president’s executive actions “have been very important to his mind-set.”

A Harvard professor who wrote two policy memos in 2013 for Obama stated that the president is thinking about the future:

He’s not trying to change the agenda for the next six months, he’s trying to change it for the next six or 12 years.

Politico points out that White House dinners are becoming more frequent, and so are Obama’s golf outings, if that is possible. After one party, which included Obama's new buddy, basketball player Alonzo Mourning, the president told his guests, “I needed this, I needed the golf, I needed to laugh. I needed to spend time with friends.”
..................................................

View the complete article at:

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/..._congress.html

[bsteadman]

Special Report: The Obama Paradox

Politico
Carrie Budoff Brown and Jennifer Epstein
Updated 6/2/2014

Excerpt:

The ritual started in earnest last fall in the midst of the biggest humiliation of Barack Obama’s presidency, the failure of the health care website. Anytime he heard a sliver of good news, the president reacted the same way: He knocked on the polished cherry wood table in the Roosevelt Room.

It’s a small thing, almost a nervous tic, but Obama’s habit of knocking on wood during Obamacare meetings had become notable, something that close advisers talked and even joked about among themselves.

Obama had always projected the aura of a deeply confident man, someone who on the basis of past experience was justified in assuming that good luck just naturally happened to him. But in the second term, confronted by recurring setbacks and regular reminders of the limits of his power, he began to convey a sense that even hopeful news might be ephemeral, a mirage.

When Obamacare fixer Jeffrey Zients told the president for the first time that the website would finally hold up under a rush of visitors, Obama joined his senior aides in a round of knocking. When the insurance marketplace finally functioned as it should, they knocked. When enrollment numbers picked up in March, they knocked.

In interviews with more than 60 people who have had close dealings with Obama — his aides, lawmakers, friends, historians, critics and outside advisers — the portrait emerges of a president shadowed by a deepening awareness that his time and power are finite, and that two-thirds of his presidency is already in the past tense.

The interviews, which illuminate Obama’s thinking, outlook and choices as he navigates his second term, suggest a paradox. Often stymied at home and abroad, Obama recognizes that he is less in control of the Washington agenda than ever in his presidency — a reality that has left him deeply frustrated at times. Last week was a case study, with the Veterans Affairs scandal and resignation of Secretary Eric Shinseki eclipsing Obama’s surprise visit to Afghanistan and major foreign policy speech at West Point.

Yet his newfound realism has also given him a palpable sense of liberation.

The president, finally, is much freer to talk about things that matter to him. He discusses issues of race in a far more personal way, more frequently, than he ever did in his first term. He is more prone to speak his mind on contentious social issues, to the point of volunteering that, in his younger days, “I got high’’ — an unusually blunt take on his past that aides say they would have prevented before his reelection, fearful of how his critics would use the sound bite.

Obama still hasn’t accepted the extraordinary isolation of being president. But he’s become more deliberate in finding ways to break out, particularly as he suffers the early onset of empty nest syndrome. With his daughters around less, the Obamas are taking fuller advantage of the perquisites of the office, such as squeezing “A Raisin in the Sun” on Broadway into a recent Manhattan fundraising trip.

In a departure from a long practice of keeping his personal circle strikingly tight and rarely lingering at official events, Obama has been hosting star-studded dinners that sometimes go on well past midnight and inviting a few newcomers such as former NBA star Alonzo Mourning into his social sphere. He’s playing golf more than any other year, replacing basketball as his go-to sport, partly because of concerns about getting injured.

Obama is giving more thought to his post-presidency than his aides like to suggest. He has spoken privately of his intention to establish a foundation with the reach and influence of the Clinton Global Initiative, the international fundraising juggernaut started by former President Bill Clinton. And despite his deep connections to Chicago, he has told friends he would like to live in New York City.

The president’s political world is more and more beyond his command. Instead, it is driven by Republicans in Congress, potentially power-shifting Senate races in states where Obama isn’t welcomed to campaign, and to speculation centered on Hillary Clinton’s agenda — not his own. Obama tells anxious Democrats that there is only so much he can do beyond fundraising and better implementing the health care law. But he also has told allies that losing the Senate to Republicans would make his last two years in office unbearable.

This sense of diminished possibilities has infused his governing strategy.
................................

View the complete article, including video, at:

http://www.politico.com/story/2014/0...#ixzz33Vhkjklz