Weary Obama at Break, Hoping for a Breakthrough
all you retards voted for him you get whats come in
Gabriella Demczuk/The New York Times
A Change After a Difficult 2013:
President Obama’s end-of-year news conference had a different tone from his inauguration speech in January.
By JACKIE CALMES
Published: December 20, 2013
WASHINGTON — President Obama’s news conference on Friday was full of
banter and holiday wishes, in keeping with the year-end White House
ritual. But Mr. Obama’s demeanor and words were often downbeat, leaving
no doubt that the gathering was not, as he said at the beginning, “the
most wonderful news conference of the year.”
Video Clips
Stephen Crowley/The New York Times
President Obama, seen through a White House briefing
room window, fielded questions on Friday at a news conference.
That was fitting — 2013 was far from the most wonderful of Mr. Obama’s
five crisis-filled years. And though he held out hope as he parried with
reporters for more than an hour that “2014 can be a breakthrough year
for America,” he offered little hint of new ideas or strategies to
advance his once-ambitious agenda past hostile Republicans.
“The end of the year is always a good time to reflect and see what can
you do better next year. That’s how I intend to approach it,” Mr. Obama
said. “I am sure that I will have even better ideas after a couple days
of sleep and sun.”
It was as if the president could already smell the exhaust fumes of
Marine One, which within hours would whisk him and his family from the
South Lawn of the White House on the beginning of their annual holiday
trip, a full two weeks in Hawaii. “I know you are all eager to skip town
and spend some time with your families. Not surprisingly, I am, too,”
he said.
Mr. Obama, from his opening remarks, stressed the economy’s signs of
growth, and he said that building on such progress is “going to be where
I focus all of my efforts in the year ahead.” But while he could cite
specifics about improving economic indicators on employment, growth and
deficits, he did not give details about his agenda, even as he said that
“2014 needs to be a year of action.”
The impression conveyed was of a president as manager, one without much
of an agenda or the political wherewithal for new initiatives that could
make it through a Congress where Republicans are more determined than
ever to thwart him before next year’s midterm elections. He ends the
first year of his second term — typically the best chance for policy
achievements before lame-duck status sets in — with his approval ratings
having hit a record low and many Democrats disillusioned by the
controversies over the health insurance law and disclosures about
widespread intelligence surveillance of phone records.
From the news conference’s first question — “Has this been the worst
year of your presidency?” — Mr. Obama offered a sobering review of a
year that had begun, after his decisive re-election, with the expansive
language, high hopes and summons to political unity contained in his
second Inaugural Address. “For now decisions are upon us,” he said in
wrapping up that speech, “and we cannot afford delay.”
Eleven months later, Mr. Obama was prepared as reporters drilled him on
the disappointments he has suffered since that January celebration. He
laughed at that first question, and said that reporters had chronicled
“at least 15 near-death experiences” during his tenure. He maintained a
game face, if a haggard one, as he acknowledged the frustrations and
failures on immigration, budget policy, gun violence and health care
that were part of his second-term agenda — one that, while ambitious,
was not nearly as sweeping as his first.
The closest that Mr. Obama came to making news was in hinting that he
may support a review panel’s recommendation to curb the National
Security Agency’s collection of telephone records by allowing telephone
companies — not the government — to hold the data until intelligence
officials need access on a case-by-case basis.
Several times he sought to reflect optimism about policy prospects for
the year ahead, but — ever the pragmatist — not too much.
The Republican-controlled House might have stopped the Senate’s
bipartisan bill to overhaul the immigration system and provide a path to
citizenship for about 11 million people who are in the country
illegally, but Mr. Obama cited “indications” that it would act on
immigration legislation in 2014. “And the fact that it didn’t hit the
timeline that I’d prefer is obviously frustrating,” he added, “but it’s
not something that I end up brooding a lot about.”
Months of talks with Senate Republicans in the first half of the year
failed to yield an elusive grand bargain on the budget that would reduce
annual deficits while increasing public investments. So he was left to
applaud Congress for sending him a far more modest two-year deal this
week, though “it’s not everything that I would like, obviously.”
Video Clips
Related
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The Caucus: Highlights From Obama’s News Conference (December 20, 2013)
“It’s probably too early to declare an outbreak of bipartisanship, but
it’s also fair to say that we’re not condemned to endless gridlock,” he
said. Yet Mr. Obama sounded purposely unconvincing when he suggested
that congressional Republicans surely would not put up a fight over the
next budget deadline — the need to increase the government’s borrowing
limit by March — as they have threatened to do.
“Now I can’t imagine that, having seen this possible daylight breaking
when it comes to cooperation in Congress, that folks are thinking,
actually, about plunging us back into the kinds of brinkmanship and
governance by crisis that has done us so much harm over the last couple
of years,” he said.
Mr. Obama volunteered his disappointment that Congress did not pass a
law to require background checks for gun buyers, a priority after the
school massacre in Newtown, Conn., a year ago. Yet he made no suggestion
of reviving that cause in the face of opposition from the gun lobby and
lawmakers in both parties.
A year ago, administration officials defended the relative paucity of
new ideas for the second term by saying that the president would be
putting into effect his first term’s achievements, chiefly his hallmark
Affordable Care Act. Yet on Friday, Mr. Obama was once again forced to
acknowledge that his administration had bungled the Oct. 1 introduction
of the website where Americans shop for the health insurance that the
law requires them to have, even as he boasted of improvements since
then.
There are, he said, “a couple million people, maybe more, who are going to have health care on Jan 1.”
“And that is a big deal,” he added. “That’s why I ran for this office.”
“It’s not that I don’t engage in a lot of self-reflection here,” Mr.
Obama said at another point about the health insurance program. “I
promise you, I probably beat myself up, you know, even worse than”
reporters do.
“But,” he said, “I’ve also got to wake up in the morning and make sure
that I do better the next day and that we keep moving forward. And when I
look at the landscape for next year, what I say to myself is: We’re
poised to do really good things.”
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