Obama leaving his mark in second term
Associated Press
WASHINGTON
With a recent streak of activism, President Barack Obama is shaking up the governing status quo and creating a new normal for his successors.
Whether it’s immigration or Internet access, climate change or Cuba, Obama is laying down a foundation that while fragile and subject to change is defining how he enters the final two years of his presidency and what he leaves for the next White House occupant.
In the weeks since the midterm elections gave Republicans full control of Congress, Obama has acted in unbridled ways on foreign- and domestic-policy fronts. The list is significant. In addition to taking executive actions to shield millions of immigrants from deportation, securing anti-pollution goals with China and undertaking a historic diplomatic opening with Havana, Obama has sought to sustain new ties with once reclusive Myanmar, make Alaska’s Bristol Bay off limits to oil and gas drilling, and affirm “net neutrality.”
David Axelrod, a former senior Obama adviser, said: “He is someone who ran for office to tackle big, lingering problems and, now, as he looks at the final years of his administration, he seems determined to use every tool at his disposal to make progress on as many of them as he can.”
Aides and advisers say that even if Obama’s actions can be undone, he is giving the public a taste of change that would be difficult to reverse.
“Though his powers are significant, they’re not without limit, so some of the actions he’s taken could be reversed by future presidents,” Axelrod said. “But is some future president really going to want to reach back and break relations with Cuba? Or put millions of undocumented workers who have lived and worked here for years back on the list for deportation?”
The elections have had a liberating effect on the president even while inflicting a heavy cost on his party’s agenda. The sentiment at the White House the day after the Democrats got a midterm drubbing was that the only thing worse than confronting an all-Republican-led Congress was continuing the stalemate of the previous four years.
Politics, of course, are still a factor in presidential decisions, but no longer does Obama have to weigh the effect his decisions would have on his own electoral prospects or consider the parochial concerns of vulnerable Democrats like he did in delaying his immigration measures.