New challenges face candidate Obama

Associated Press

WASHINGTON

He promised change, and he looked the part. No longer.

The Barack Obama of 2011 is a chief executive who confronts enormous challenges, chief among them the economy, as he starts building a re-election campaign far different from the juggernaut of optimism and trajectory that vaulted him to the White House.

He’s the incumbent facing the daunting task of convincing a nation burdened by high unemployment that he has delivered change, made the right moves and earned the chance to continue the job.

“Ultimately, I’ll be judged as president as to the bottom line, results,” Obama said after the Democrats’ November election “shellacking.” Democratic losses set the stage for divided government, gave Obama a chance to shift to the center by compromising with Republicans and led to White House staffing changes that signal the start of Obama’s re-election drive. It will ramp up in the coming months.

His hurdles are great.

Obama owns the slow-to-recover economy and is the face of a Washington he once campaigned against. Polls show his diverse voting coalition from 2008 cracked, and his support among independents weakened. His path to Electoral College victory in 2012 is tougher. And he doesn’t have George W. Bush’s unpopularity paving the way for a Democratic victory.

But the upsides are huge, too.

His personal popularity is still high, and he has the White House bully pulpit. He’s a proven record fundraiser and he has no primary challenger. The brain trust of Obama’s first campaign will run the second. Also, there’s no obvious Republican rival in a crowded GOP field.

This president has accomplished more in two years than many of his predecessors did in two terms.

After preaching bipartisanship as a candidate, Obama the president leveraged huge Democratic majorities in Congress to produce a series of legislative achievements: the health-care overhaul, new financial rules and an economic-stimulus measure.

He declared an end to the combat mission in Iraq and, while bolstering U.S. forces in Afghanistan, he has pledged to start pulling troops home.

It’s a record that could help or hurt his prospects depending on the whims of an electorate that has shown itself impatient with spotty progress amid economic turmoil.