National Journal
By Ronald Bernstein
December 23, 2014
So there he was.
The
President Obama on display the past few weeks has been the one many of
his supporters have been expecting since he took office. In a flurry of
decisions--executive
action providing legal status for millions of undocumented immigrants, a
climate deal with China, the move toward normalization with Cuba--he's
been decisive, bold, and seemingly oblivious to near-term political
costs. Rather than fruitlessly trying to untangle
Gordian knots on Capitol Hill, he's moved to slice through them with
unilateral executive action. Obama swaggered so much during his year-end
press conference last week that he looked as though he might lift the
microphone from the podium and drop it on the
stage, pop-star style, as he walked out.
It's
quite a reversal for a president who watched Republicans romp so
thoroughly in the November election that they now hold their most House
seats since
the Depression. Yet Obama seems clearly liberated, in part because he
no longer must constrain his actions for fear of hurting red state
Congressional Democrats. On issues like immigration, Obama restrained
himself and almost all of those embattled Democrats
lost anyway. He now looks to be operating under the Bobby McGee
principle that freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose.
But
that's not quite true. The big vulnerability in Obama's approach is
that his dramatic thrusts are all advancing through executive action,
not legislation.
That means that even if his agenda survives pushback from the
Republican Congress (likely) and the courts (more uncertain), it can
still be undone by the next president. Which in turn means the verdict
on Obama unbound will pivot on whether his initiatives
improve or diminish the chances of a Democrat succeeding him in 2016.
It's
already a given that Obama will loom over 2016. Exit polls found that
roughly four-fifths of voters who approved of Ronald Reagan in 1988,
Bill Clinton
in 2000 and George W. Bush in 2008 voted for their party's nominee to
succeed them. Exactly 88 percent of the voters who disapproved of Reagan
and Clinton voted for the other party's candidate; for Bush the number
was two-thirds. If voters in 2016 look no
more favorably on Obama than the electorate in 2014-when 44 percent
approved of his performance and 55 percent disapproved-any Democratic
nominee will face a stiff headwind.
Though
Obama still faces significant doubts about his leadership and
management skills, he can reasonably hope that events may lift his
standing. With
employment growth accelerating, the economy has already created over
six times as many jobs since he took office than during Bush's entire
two terms. While his health care law still faces public skepticism and
legal threats, it is contributing to positive
trends on coverage and costs. Foreign crises can always erupt (see: The
Interview) but Obama can point to gains against Russia, ISIS and Ebola,
and the possibility of a major international climate agreement next
year.
His
recent policy offensive follows a different political equation. The
overall public reaction to his initiatives varies; for instance, polls
show that
slightly more Americans disapprove than approve of him acting
unilaterally on immigration (though they continue to support the
underlying move to legal status). The consistent note is that his
actions inspire strong support within the Democrats' "coalition
of the ascendant"-the growing groups of minorities, Millennials and
socially liberal upscale whites, especially women, who powered his two
victories. That helps explain why Hillary Rodham Clinton has quickly
endorsed each of Obama's big recent moves.
In
mirror image, Obama's actions are antagonizing core Republican groups,
like older and blue-collar whites. That is already pressuring the 2016
GOP presidential
contenders to pledge to overturn his programs. But that exposes
Republicans to the risk of systematically clashing with groups growing
in the electorate, like the U.S.-born Cubans who polls show support
normalization far more than do those born in Cuba.
The
White House is acutely conscious of creating these conflicts. One
senior Obama adviser says the administration "to do list" after 2012
included thinking
"about how you lock in the Obama coalition for Democrats going forward.
Because it's not a 100 percent certainty that they come out for the
next Democrat." Part of the answer, the adviser said, was to pursue
aggressive unilateral action on "a set of issues
where we have an advantage … and believe are substantively the right
thing to do" and dare Republicans to oppose him.
Most
Republicans are happy to take that bait, confident that what they see
as Obama's overreach will energize conservatives and alienate
independents
in 2016. The White House is betting instead that Obama is helping the
next Democratic nominee reassemble his winning coalition. By energizing
the party base, Obama's fusillade could also free Clinton to stress an
economic message that courts white-working
class voters-if his flurry of left-leaning unilateral actions doesn't
irrevocably alienate them first. Either way, with his defiant late-term
resurgence, the President is not just making an abstract play for
history; he is concretely shaping the contest to
succeed him.
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