Eight days ago, President Obama went before the White House press corps to acknowledge the previous day’s midterm-election results and take his knocks. “Obviously, Republicans had a good night,” he said. “And they deserve credit for running good campaigns. Beyond that, I’ll leave it to all of you and the professional pundits to pick through yesterday’s results.”
The assembled journalists, and their counterparts nationwide, didn’t need any encouragement. The verdict they reached was virtually unanimous. The Democrats had been thumped, beaten, battered, drubbed, thrashed, bashed, shellacked—the exact phrases varied, but their meaning did not. In the words of an editorial in this week’s edition of The Economist, “Mr. Obama cannot escape the humiliating verdict on his presidency.”
Insomuch as there was any analysis of what the results would mean for the next two years, it tended to dwell on when the President would recognize the error of his ways. In the narrative promulgated by the panjandrums of the Washington commentariat, this would involve publicly acknowledging his grave character flaws, disassembling the tight-knit circle of aides that surrounds him, inviting over some Capitol Hill bigwigs (and possibly some media bigwigs) for whiskey-and-poker evenings, and generally being less of an arrogant, aloof jerk. After Obama went on CBS’s “Face the Nation” over the weekend and made comments similar to ones he had offered in his press conference, Bob Woodward, during a panel discussion later in the show, criticized the President’s failure to make clear that he was now willing to listen to, and compromise with, the Republicans. It was the same old Obama, Woodward lamented.
In that, Woodward was almost certainly correct. Rather than seeking to reinvent himself as a glad-hander or a triangulator, Obama spent the first week of his two-year term as Lame-Duck-in-Chief doing what he usually does: quietly going about his business, using the levers of a divided government to advance bits and pieces of his agenda, and no doubt hoping, that, at some point, his supporters and critics alike will recognize that his actions add up to something of significance. And, lo and behold, he had quite a bit of success.
Before election week was out, he had nominated a replacement for the outgoing Attorney General, Eric Holder. In Loretta Lynch, the mob-busting, terrorist-trying U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York (Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island, and Long Island), the White House found a prosecutor who seems likely to pursue much of Holder’s agenda, but also to avoid some of the partisan bickering that characterized his tenure. Lynch has already been confirmed by the Senate twice, and even Fox News personalities find it hard to fault her. ”Lynch is both highly qualified and abundantly experienced to become the nation’s top law enforcement officer,” Fox’s Gregg Jarrett, a former defense attorney, wrote at foxnews.com. Jarrett went on, “Unlike her predecessor, she has no close ties to Obama. ...There is no history or evidence to suggest she will use her high office to act like a carnival barker in abetting the political manifesto of President Obama. If confirmed, Lynch has the potential to breathe new life and a principled stewardship into a vital department that has lost sight of its own name.”
Before departing on a trip to Asia and Australia, Obama followed up his nomination of Lynch by issuing a forceful statement in favor of net neutrality. In an earlier post, I said that the President could have accompanied this clarion call to preserve the open, non-discriminatory spirit of the Web with a commitment to protecting the interests of ordinary Internet users, many of whom are being ripped off by quasi-monopolistic Internet-service providers. On its own terms, though, Obama’s declaration was a powerful and welcome one. In addition to reaffirming a policy stance he campaigned on in 2008, the President showed that he is willing to stand up, where necessary, to the new Republican majority on Capitol Hill. In calling on the Federal Communications Commission to regulate I.S.P.s as public utilities, he surely knew that he would spark outrage among conservatives, as well as Congressional hearings, and, quite likely, a lengthy legal battle that will end up before the Supreme Court. But he went ahead anyway.
And then, after he arrived in Beijing for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit, the President unveiled a much bigger surprise: an agreement with the Chinese government on confronting climate change, which garnered the praise of environmental organizations the world over. The Sierra Club called it “historic,” and Greenpeace, the National Resources Defense Council, and the Environmental Defense Fund also hailed the promise by the world’s two biggest CO2-emission scofflaws to reduce emissions and invest in sustainable energy. (It was left to Friends of the Earth to issue a cautionary note, warning that the measures agreed upon, even if they are fully enacted, would be insufficient to prevent global warming.)
Quite possibly, the deal will turn out to have been oversold a bit. But if China is serious about its pledges, which include capping its carbon emissions by 2030 and ending its “dash to coal,” this represents a significant development—one that shouldn’t be lost on Republican members of Congress, who, for years, have been using the inaction of developing countries like China and India as an excuse for blocking efforts to curb emissions here at home. Evidently, the deal was months in the making, and it began with an approach to the Chinese by Secretary of State John Kerry. After all the talk of U.S.–Chinese relations approaching the abyss, that reflects well on Kerry. But the agreement also represents a big coup for President Obama.
Indeed, given all the criticism of him on this side of the Pacific, he may have been tempted to stay in Beijing for a while. Despite a bit of carping in the local papers about his “insipid banality” and his habit of chewing nicotine gum, “excitement rippled through the room” when he arrived to give his big speech at the APEC summit, Jamil Anderlini, of the Financial Times, reported from the scene. En masse, the crowd of dignitaries and diplomats reached for its smartphones to take pictures of the American leader. “Mr. Obama is a rock star in China, no matter what editorials in state-controlled nationalist media say,” Anderlini noted.
Once upon a time—about six years ago, to be precise—Obama was a feted celebrity in Washington, too. These days, it’s not quite like that, of course, and the President, once he gets home, will be frequently and painfully reminded of what has changed. But perhaps it’s a bit early to write him off. In the American system, Presidents don’t have very much power to act unilaterally—on the domestic side, anyway. But, as long as they are in office, practically everything that happens revolves around them, and that gives them the opportunity to shape events, if not dictate them.
During his first week of living in reduced circumstances after the midterms, Obama showed that he is capable of exceeding expectations, and he isn’t done yet. Sometime in the next month, he is expected to invoke his executive authority to prevent the deportation of countless undocumented immigrants. The Republicans won’t like that policy any more than they like net neutrality or tackling climate change, but it looks set to become the law of the land.
It’s too early for Democrats to cast off their mourning garb, crack open the bubbly, and toast their embattled President. But he’s already earned a few more pieces of gum.
