No Vacation for Troubled Obama

The president has had a tough start to his second term; his summer exploits have been so far fruitless.

The president was not in light-hearted mood this Sunday at Camp David, even as he celebrated his 52nd birthday with his wife Michelle, who teased him that his hair is going “a little grayer.” The U.S. president would indeed have to look far and wide for any rays of sunshine in his record since his inauguration on January 20. He had hoped for a second term defined by redemption, but the springtime was marred by a series of failures eventually labeled “scandalabra” by his advisers.

The list of misadventures to have befallen the president is enlightening: the drama in Benghazi, the failure of the law on gun control, the “Fast and Furious” scandal, which entailed a botched operation against illegal trafficking on the Mexican border, the excessive use of murderous drones against suspected hardline Islamists across the world, the National Security Agency (NSA)’s eavesdropping and the catastrophe of Edward Snowden’s revelations to Russia and China of the United States’ defensiveness.

This litany of disasters would not be complete without mentioning the brutal jousting to come this fall. Dark clouds are gathering on the horizon, announcing a congressional return that will be painful at the very least. The Republican opposition is fired up against a president seen as more authoritarian and distant than ever; they are ready to wage ferocious war in Congress. They do not lack targets; aside from the issues enumerated above, a steely resolve will be shown on the raising of the debt ceiling and on the federal budget. The Republican Party, moreover, has promised to shred the law on health insurance and the bill on an amnesty for Latino illegal immigrants.

This incessant bipartisan blockage has resulted in a poisonous atmosphere on Capitol Hill. Knives drawn, Democratic and Republican representatives continue to paralyze the legislative machine. Only once this summer have the two sides even come close to a rapprochement — on July 31, when Obama’s former rival in the 2008 presidential election, Arizona senator John McCain, opened the wrong door in the corridors of the Capitol and found himself face-to-face with the president in the middle of a meeting with Democratic leaders.

This anecdote would raise a smile if the federal political scene weren’t in such a desperate state. Despite promises made during the election campaign, the president has re-embraced partisanship; ever since the sterile battle of strength with House Speaker John Boehner in 2011, he continues to find it difficult to cross the ideological divide that separates him from Republican representatives.

It is for this reason that the White House made the decision, at the beginning of the summer, to counterattack; the president’s spin doctors wonder if it is not already too late to rebalance a fatally compromised administration. In an effort to stop the hemorrhage, an attack plan named the “Great Bargain” for the middle classes, intended to get voters’ attention in the model of Roosevelt’s New Deal, was devised to turn the page from “scandalabra” and articulate the presidential credo — “jobs, middle classes, growth” — in a series of memorable speeches intended to galvanize the masses. Crisscrossing backwater America, Obama’s double mission is to reassure the middle classes who have not yet seen the light at the end of the tunnel the country entered in the 2008 crisis and mobilize them against the Republicans’ purportedly systematic obstructionism.

The strings are visible and the bait is taking its time to be caught — unsurprising given how stale the first speeches given in Missouri, Florida and Tennessee have seemed, complete with rehashed proposals for professional tax reduction and job creation schemes. It’s to the point where the president’s charm offensive — which continues this week with a rare TV appearance on comedian Jay Leno’s program — seems to have dragged on. Failing to tap into the populace, the strategy has delighted the Republican camp, which hasn’t missed the chance to denounce Obama as isolated in his ivory tower, as a champion speaker but not a doer. Boehner’s spokesman, Brendan Buck, published two biting tweets that summed up the wasteland that is “Obama2”: “We heard about this ‘Grand Bargain’ from the AP wire,” he wrote. “Wish I’d seen the White House meeting where someone suggested packaging a host of things Republicans oppose and calling it a grand bargain.” For Obama, graying and still as unskilled as ever at attempting compromise, the light at the end of the tunnel seems ever to recede.