ON EARLY indications, 2014 will be a tough year for Barack Obama. Since the advent of modern polling in the 1930s, only George W. Bush began his sixth year in the White House on rockier ground. The November mid-term elections loom as a referendum on how effective he is over the next nine months, before he slips into lame-duck status and the focus turns to the 2016 presidential campaign.
Small wonder that the president’s fifth State of the Union address was carefully parsed for policy and political directions. His key theme was the familiar problem – the bitter, stalemated politics of contemporary Washington – but he also placed new emphasis on generating economic opportunities for lower- and middle-class Americans to help deal with the growing income gap and stagnating social mobility. The push includes increasing the minimum wage, creating a new government-backed private retirement savings plan, and providing universal access to early-childhood education, together with a broader focus on job creation and job training. Although his message was aimed at those falling behind, Obama sought to sound a hopeful note on an economy that has been painfully slow to recover from the global financial crisis.
Obama also outlined how he plans to use his executive powers to drive a “year of action.” He is now openly acknowledging what has been obvious for some time – that Republican lawmakers have no interest in advancing his agenda, even when it appears to be (or should be) coincident with theirs. The commitments in last year’s State of the Union speech went nowhere. The emotional centrepiece, in the aftermath of the shooting tragedy at a school in Newtown, Connecticut, was a demand for a change in America’s gun culture through a simple up-or-down vote. Despite the resonance of that issue at the time, the vote never happened and the attention of lawmakers and voters alike has moved elsewhere.
Instead of pledging to fix the legislative gridlock, the president is promising to find ways around it. When Washington’s infighting “prevents us from carrying out even the most basic functions of our democracy – when our differences shut down government or threaten the full faith and credit of the United States,” he said, “then we are not doing right by the American people.” He went further, urging state and local lawmakers to take the initiative: “Every mayor, governor and state legislator in America… you don’t have to wait for Congress to act.”
This approach frees Obama from striking difficult legislative deals in the face of entrenched opposition, and allows him to act on issues like climate change and the environment that are going nowhere in Congress. Not surprisingly, Republicans denounced the new proposals and accused the president of failing to work through the legislative process. Tea Party members even broached the idea of impeachment on the basis that Obama’s use of executive powers is an attempt to “smash the Constitution's restrictions on government power.”
It was clear that this State of the Union address was about more than the next year’s policy agenda. Its purpose was both to restore public confidence and trust in the presidency after a dispiriting year and to begin shaping the president’s legacy and extending his influence into the post-Obama era.
Winning over a nation that has grown distrustful of his leadership will be no easy task. On the eve of the State of the Union, more Americans rated Obama’s performance negatively (50 per cent) than positively (46 per cent) and the polls reveal that Americans are pessimistic that he or Congress can make good decisions for the future of the country.
Still, a majority of American voters support the themes and policy ideas the president emphasised. Polling from WSJ/NBC News shows that large majorities of respondents want the White House and lawmakers to focus on job creation and early-childhood education, and a smaller majority favour increasing the minimum wage. About half of Americans want the government to play a role in reducing income equality.
The polls also emphasise the political challenges and divides. A recent Pew Research Center poll shows wide differences in opinion over how much the government should – and can – do to address these issues, and sharp divisions among conservatives about raising the minimum wage. Among Republicans and those who lean Republican, 70 per cent of those who agree with the Tea Party oppose an extension of unemployment benefits and nearly as many oppose raising the minimum wage (65 per cent). But 52 per cent of non–Tea Party Republicans favour a one-year extension of unemployment benefits and 65 per cent of them support increasing the minimum wage.
The Democrats are heavily invested in Obama’s approval ratings, and those ratings are strongly linked to economic performance and the impact of Obamacare. But the polls show Americans are still confused by these issues. In the January WSJ/NBC News poll, 61 per cent of respondents said they were satisfied with their own financial situation but 71 per cent expressed some level of dissatisfaction with the broader economy. And while 48 per cent of Americans still believe the new health law was a bad idea, a majority of those polled want to keep Obamacare and would like to see its current glitches fixed.
To date, the State of the Union speech seems to have done little to change public perceptions. In the two national polls released since the speech – daily tracking polls from Gallup and Rasmussen Reports – Obama’s approval ratings have not moved. Democrats are nervous about the president’s approval ratings because of the consequences for the November congressional elections. Such contests are usually challenging for the party of incumbent presidents, and the prospect of losing control of the Senate looms. Still, there are glimmers of hope for the Democrats: by a slim margin (45 per cent to 43 per cent), more Americans want to see Congress controlled by Democrats than by Republicans.
MEANWHILE, Congressional Republicans struggle to be relevant to the needs of voters and to promote new policy ideas. Their mid-term election message will revolve largely around their blanket opposition to the healthcare law and their pledge to repeal it. Senate Republicans have been using the filibuster to block the extension of long-term unemployment benefits and Republican leaders have repeatedly expressed scepticism about the likelihood of an immigration reform bill passing this year.
The real irony here is that the Republicans’ opposition to immigration reform could eventually lead to their political demise as American demographics change. In the long run, Republicans must reach out to Hispanic voters, for whom this is a key issue. But House candidates take a much shorter and more personal view; they are fearful that bringing this immigration reform forward now will depress conservative voter turnout and damage their election chances in 2014.
Even though it is two years until the Iowa caucuses and three years to the next presidential elections, these issues are intensely debated because the pundits and the parties are already looking ahead to 2016. The Republican Party is divided and in turmoil, with a civil war raging between its establishment and insurgent factions. With no obvious early favourite and no incumbent, the number of potential contenders – including many who ran in 2012 – is enormous. If the uncertainty continues, attention and money will be distributed thinly until the unsuitable candidates fall by the wayside.
In contrast, the Democrats appear already to be closing ranks behind Hillary Rodham Clinton. A recent Washington Post/ABC News poll shows her support at 73 per cent among those likely to vote Democratic. In the poll’s thirty-year history, no one has had such a strong grip at such an early point. But an early high profile can be a dangerous thing, as New Jersey’s governor Chris Christie can attest. As he battles the fall-out from a scandal surrounding traffic flows on the George Washington Bridge last year, Christie has fallen in the polls and now ranks third behind Paul Ryan and Jeb Bush.
But the immediate priority for Obama and the Democrats is to shore up their position with voters in the 2014 election, especially in the conservative-leaning states that will govern control of the Senate. Obama has said that he wants to be a president who makes a difference. This year is really his final opportunity before the fight for succession becomes politically all-consuming. •
