“I kind of like the direction he has signaled he is going in. He knows he has nothing to lose.”
— Rep. Lacy Clay (D-MO), quoted by the Washington Examiner, on President Obama.
Quote of the Day
“Bipartisan progress can only be achieved if President Obama is interested in it.”
— Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), quoted by CNN.
CEO Who Predicted Layoffs Gives Raises Instead
In the lead-up to the 2012 presidential election, Think Progress reminds us that Westgate Resorts CEO David Siegel sent an email to all employees: “Of course, as your employer, I can’t tell you whom to vote for” but he noted that re-electing President Obama would “threaten your job” and result in “less benefits and certainly less opportunity for everyone.”
Two years later, Siegel informed employees that he would boost their salaries because 2014 beat all expectations: “We’re experiencing the best year in our history and I wanted to do something to show my gratitude for the employees who make that possible.” He told the Orlando Business Journal that “things have never been better.”
Hawaii’s Favorite Son?
Los Angeles Times: “Obama left Hawaii over the weekend after two weeks of what has become the first family’s traditional end-of-the-year vacation here, but such visits increasingly appear less like homecomings. Obama attends luaus and plays golf with old friends, but he and his family stay at a rented home. He hasn’t lived here since he left for college and few expect him to return full time when he leaves the White House. He only occasionally interacts with the public, and doesn’t return to the sites of childhood exploits.”
“In turn, residents mostly leave him alone, acknowledging his desire to use his yearly visits to recharge, yet still seeing him as one of their own.”
Obama’s Privacy Zone Is Golf
New York Times: “Six years into his presidency, there seems to be almost nothing the nation does not know about Mr. Obama, ranging from his views on the use of drones to target terrorists to how his daughters have less interest in hanging out with him as they become teenagers. But little is known about the state of his game and what he is like on the golf course, where he has spent roughly 1,000 hours playing 214 rounds since he was elected in 2008.”
GOP Predictions Gone Wrong
Think Progress looks at four things that were supposed to happen by 2015 if Barack Obama was re-elected president.
Chicago Obama Library Bid in Trouble
“The Barack Obama Foundation has major problems with the University of Chicago bid for the Obama presidential library and museum and is uneasy about the bid from the University of Illinois at Chicago, leaving Columbia University in New York the front-runner for the project,” the Chicago Sun Times reports.
Obama’s Family Vacation With Teenage Girls
“As president, Barack Obama must contend with challenges of global importance, even while on vacation. But as a father, he potentially faces a test on the home front: A two-week family vacation with teenage daughters,” the New York Times reports.
“Despite the unique experience of growing up in the White House, protected by Secret Service agents and minders who carefully control their media exposure, the Obama daughters appear, in rare glimpses, to be, well, teenagers who at times show spunk and independence.”
A Strong Closer
Andrew Sullivan: “There has long been a pattern to Barack Obama’s political career on the national stage. There are moments of soaring moral clarity and inspiration; there are long periods of drift or laziness or passivity; and there are often very good fourth quarters. The 2008 campaign was an almost perfect coda: the sudden initial breakout, then a strange listlessness as he allowed the Clintons to come back in New Hampshire, turning the race into a long and grueling battle for delegates, then a final denouement when he made up with the Clintons and stormed into the White House. Or think of healthcare reform: a clear early gamble, followed by a truly languorous and protracted period of negotiation and posturing, and then a breakthrough. Or marriage equality: an excruciating period of ambivalence followed by a revolution. On climate: a failed cap and trade bill … followed by real tough fuel emissions standards, new carbon rules from the EPA and an agreement with China.”
“If you were to track this pattern – strong start, weak middle, winning final streak – throughout his entire presidency, you might have expected his worst year to be the one when he was just re-elected and had the wind at his back. And you would be right. 2013 was truly awful. But you’d also expect his final years to be strong.”
Obama is Finally Free
Politico: “It’s taken Obama – who spuriously predicted the 2012 election would break the ‘fever’ of partisan gridlock – two miserable years to approach the level of presidential liberation he believes he earned that night. Yet there was always something slightly off about the idea that Obama would do better without a campaign in his future. The truth, according to current and former aides, is that the absence of a presidential election – the natural Obama habitat – actually contributed to the ennui and frustration that has hallmarked most of his second term.”
“Obama’s turnaround in recent weeks – he’s seized the offensive with a series of controversial executive actions and challenges to leaders in his own party on the budget — can be attributed to a fundamental change in his political mindset, according to current and former aides. He’s gone from thinking of himself as a sitting (lame) duck, they tell me, to a president diving headlong into what amounts to a final campaign – this one to preserve his legacy, add policy points to the scoreboard, and – last but definitely not least – to inflict the same kind of punishment on his newly empowered Republican enemies, who delighted in tormenting him when he was on top.”
John Avlon: The liberation of the lame duck
Huffington Post: Obama ends 2014 with a swagger
Obama Takes Over ‘The Colbert Report’
President Obama was very funny on The Colbert Report last night.
Public Perception Wrong on Two Key Issues
Al Hunt notes that polling shows that “on two controversial issues, the budget deficit and deporting illegal immigrants, the public believes Obama’s critics — even though reality favors the president.”
“By 73 percent to 21 percent, the public says the federal budget deficit has gotten bigger during the Obama presidency. Here are the facts: In fiscal 2009, during the first year of Obama’s presidency, the deficit was $1.413 trillion. In the current fiscal year, the congressional budget office projects the deficit will be $469 billion, down from $483 billion in the budget year that ended Sept. 30. The deficit has been cut by two-thirds during Obama’s six years.”
“By 53 percent to 29 percent, Americans believe that Obama has sent fewer undocumented immigrants home than were deported a decade earlier. That’s a constant refrain of Obama’s immigration critics. It also isn’t true. Immigration agents removed 315,943 people in the last fiscal year. That’s down from 438,421 the year before but up 31 percent from the 240,665 deported in fiscal 2004.”
Obama Loses Support Among Young Whites
A new Gallup poll finds President Obama’s job approval rating “among white 18- to 29-year-olds is 34%, three points higher than among whites aged 30 and older. This is the narrowest approval gap between the president’s previously strong support base of white millennials and older white Americans since Obama took office.”
Obama’s Go-It-Alone Strategy
President Obama “has long since concluded that pursuing dreams of reconciliation in his final two years in office is a fool’s chase. So he is offering an alternative model for 21st-century presidential success,” the New York Times reports.
“It does not hinge on job approval ratings… His current approach does not depend on bipartisan deal making or good cheer… It does not even turn on protecting the political interests of his party… It turns, instead, on advancing the major policy goals that Mr. Obama embraced as a candidate. Through that prism, he continues to make progress.”
Bonus Quote of the Day
“The more the president talks about his ideas, the more unpopular he becomes. Why would I want to deprive him of that opportunity?”
— Speaker John Boehner, quoted by the Wall Street Journal, on reports that Republican might not invite President Obama to deliver his State of the Union address.
Obama Meets McConnell in Private Meeting
President Obama met with incoming Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) at the White House on Wednesday, in a rare one-on-one conversation between the two leaders, the Wall Street Journal reports.
“Such conversations have been an infrequent occurrence for the Democratic president and the Senate’s top Republican. The Kentucky senator, who will become majority leader in the new Congress, occasionally has attended White House meetings with other lawmakers. But a spokesman for the minority leader said Mr. McConnell last attended a private meeting with Mr. Obama in 2011. Vice President Joe Biden also was present for that conversation.”
McConnell Is ‘Perplexed’ by Obama
Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) told the Wall Street Journal that President Obama has lurched to the left since suffering a “butt-kicking” during November’s midterm elections.
Said McConnell: “By any objective standard the president got crushed in this election. So I’ve been perplexed by the reaction since the election, the sort of in your face dramatic move to the left. I don’t know what we can expect in terms of reaching bipartisan agreement.”
[speech_bubble type=”std” subtype=”a” icon=”pwdome.jpg” name=””]I wonder if Obama was perplexed when McConnell said his only goal was making him a one-term president. [/speech_bubble]
Republicans Float ‘Impeachment Lite’ Option
Republicans are backing off suggestions they might impeach President Obama over his executive action on immigration but have floated the idea of censuring him instead, TPM reports.
Said Rep. Raul Labrador (R-ID): “I think we should censure the president of the United States. I think it’s unfortunate that he did this, I think we need to lay out clearly why this is unlawful.”
“The censure strategy has much of the bombast of impeachment — a formal vehicle for Republicans to vent their disapproval of Obama, and throw red meat to the conservative base — without the risks of a politically nuclear confrontation that could backfire on them… But there’s one big problem with this plan: censuring the president might be unconstitutional. Or at least, any censure resolution that would meaningfully punish the president risks violating the Constitution, legal experts say.”
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