WASHINGTON — Three years ago, he was the candidate of hope and change.
Today, Barack Obama is the commander-in-chief presiding over an era of economic misery, facing accusations he’s failing to do enough to help hard-hit Americans who are growing increasingly frightened about their livelihoods and future prosperity.
Obama, who came to power pledging to set the United States on a new path, has been seemingly blindsided by the depth and endurance of a recession that was just beginning when he was elected president in November 2008.
“This is a president who came in wanting to be transformational,” Stephen Hess, a one-time aide to former president Richard Nixon, said Tuesday.
“He dreamed very grand dreams, and he staked it largely on health care. That’s why he focused on health care when Democrats controlled both chambers of Congress instead of immediate, shovel-ready projects that might have helped buoy the economy. And that’s leading to questions about whether he’s turned out to be the wrong person for this particular moment.”
Far removed from the glory days of his election and inauguration, this is indeed a bleak period for Obama.
The grim-faced president was at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware on Tuesday to pay his respects to the 30 U.S. troops who died Saturday when their Chinook helicopter was shot down in Afghanistan.
It was the largest single loss of life for U.S. troops in the unpopular, decade-long conflict that Obama’s supporters hoped he would swiftly end.
He’s been roundly maligned by the left for a deal struck with Republicans to avert a debt ceiling default that contains only spending cuts and no tax increases on the wealthy.
He’s also been assailed for his slow response to the Standard and Poor’s credit downgrade last week and a lacklustre, defensive speech on Monday meant to reassure nervous investors who seemingly ignored him and frantically sold off stock anyway.
While the market recovered slightly on Tuesday, Obama’s speech was pilloried as the worst moment of his presidency by some pundits.
Others said his remarks proved he’d run out of ideas and was now simply recycling the same soundbites that he’s trotted out during a spate of media appearances over the past several weeks.
The Daily Beast featured a piece this week asserting that Hillary Clinton would have been a far better president. A Democratic consultant took to the pages of the New York Times to say Obama simply isn’t up to the task of being president. A columnist at the Wall Street Journal, meantime, suggested Obama was stupid.
“Stupid is as stupid does, said the great philosopher Forrest Gump. The presidency of Barack Obama is a case study in stupid does,” Bret Stephens wrote in the Journal on Tuesday.
But others point out that Obama has largely been at the mercy of U.S. Congress, particularly in the debt ceiling brawl that has left Americans bitterly disdainful of Washington.
“When you’re in that situation where Congress’s assent is essential, those members willing to say ‘no’ have immense power and leverage,” James Lindsay, senior vice-president of the Council on Foreign Relations, said in an interview published Tuesday on the organization’s website.
“What we discovered over the last six to eight weeks is that the Republican Party in the House was willing to say ‘no’ even if it risked default ... and in that situation it would have been very difficult for any president to be able to get his way.”
Hess, now a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, scoffs at any notion that Obama is stupid but acknowledges life is bleak for the president at the moment.
“These are certainly the darkest days of his presidency,” Hess said.
“They are dark days for the global economy. But are they the darkest days in the history of the United States? No. And it’s foolish to think he can turn around the economic situation of the whole world singlehandedly.”
And despite his trials and tribulations, Hess points out, Obama is still relatively popular, with approval ratings in the 40s.
A CNN poll had him at 44 per cent on Tuesday, a number considered surprisingly high for a president grappling with such an enduring economic downturn and a series of domestic and foreign policy crises.
Polls suggest, in fact, that the Republicans are faring worse than the White House and congressional Democrats in terms of public opinion.
The CNN poll suggested voters are more miffed at Republicans than they were when the Republican-led House of Representatives voted to impeach former president Bill Clinton in 1998.
Fifty-nine per cent of those surveyed reported they had an unfavourable opinion of the Republican Party, with 33 per cent calling their opinion favourable. That’s the highest percentage, in a CNN poll, of respondents giving the Republicans the thumbs down since 1998, when 57 per cent said they thought poorly of the party.
Obama may have received some help on the economic front from the Federal Reserve on Tuesday. The Fed vowed for the first time to keep its benchmark interest rate at a record low for at least the next two years in the hopes of rejuvenating a sagging economic recovery.
It’s the biggest effort by the Fed since November to prop up the economy and spark confidence. As agency officials met on Tuesday to brainstorm, there was speculation Obama was preparing an announcement on the economy and was poised to call Congress back into session from its August recess to pass job-creation legislation.
Indeed, most political observers acknowledge that Obama is by no means headed for certain defeat in November 2012, even if the economy is still struggling. His success or failure will largely depend on the Republican presidential nominee, something GOP hopeful Tim Pawlenty acknowledged in a campaign appearance in Iowa on Tuesday.
“You can stick a fork in Barack Obama,” said Pawlenty. “Politically, he’s done. The main way we can screw this up is if we choose the wrong Republican.”