A sadder but wiser President Obama began his sixth full year in the White House on Monday still clinging to the shards of a once ambitious political agenda while acknowledging the limits of his power in Washington.
With another State of the Union address just around the corner, the President still has a substantial to-do list to tout, including additional economic measures to help the middle class, “reversing the trend toward economic bifurcation in this society,” and improved diplomatic relations with Iran that might somehow bring a semblance of stability to an explosive Middle East.
Related: Get Ready for One-Party Rule If GOP Wins the Senate
Beyond that, however, the president is under no illusion that he and a politically divided Congress will be able to negotiate anything resembling a “Grand Bargain” of reforms or a “Marshall Plan” for inner cities before he leaves office. With his own approval ratings at record lows, Obama has relatively little leverage on Capitol Hill – even among Democrats.
In a far ranging and revealing series of interviews with New Yorker Editor David Remnick published over the weekend, Obama acknowledged the limitations of a president’s power to effect change. He said that even the greatest presidents – like Abraham Lincoln – had to operate in the currents of history.
“It took another hundred and fifty years before African-Americans had anything approaching formal equality, much less real equality,” Obama said. ”At the end of the day we're part of a long-running story. We just try to get our paragraph right."
Related: Obama’s Dismal Approval Ratings Take Another Dive
Like every other president before him, Obama frets about how history will treat him, especially with regard to his widely documented inability to steer major legislation through Congress, with the notable exceptions of the economic stimulus, the Affordable Care Act and the Dodd-Frank financial industry reform. Remnick writes that Obama has started to entertain more and has had presidential historians over as guests, including Doris Kearns Goodwin and Robert Caro, the biographer of President Lyndon B. Johnson, who was a master of working his will with Congress.
“At the most recent dinner he attended at the White House, Caro had the distinct impression that Obama was cool to him, annoyed, perhaps, at the notion appearing in the press that his latest Johnson volume was an implicit rebuke to him,” according to Remnick.
Here are seven takeaways from Remnick’s opus, which was based on hours of interviews in the Oval Office and on Air Force One:
Related: Obama’s Risky Strategy on Closing the Income Gap
- Economic inequality: Obama’s overarching goal at this point is to find ways to narrow or slow the growing economic gap between the rich and the poor. But he concedes he will have a limited capacity to achieve major reforms before his second term is over. “The appetite for tax-and-transfer strategies, even among Democrats, much less among independents or Republicans, is probably somewhat limited.” Obama said. “Marshall Plan for the inner city is not going to get through Congress anytime soon.”
- Congressional Gridlock: Obama once had high hopes that he and House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) could find common ground on budget and economic issues. However, that was before major blowups over the debt ceiling, all-out GOP warfare against Obamacare, and a 16-day government shutdown last October. He has concluded that the opposition party is content to define itself by its opposition to the president. As Obama, a fan of the “Godfather” movies, has put it, “It turns out Marlon Brando had it easy, because, when it comes to Congress, there is no such thing as an offer they can’t refuse.”
- Relations with Iran: Obama believes that if the deal to temporarily freeze much of Tehran’s nuclear program in exchange for limited relief from the Western economic sanctions prevails, it could bring a new stability to the region. “It would be profoundly in the interest of citizens throughout the region if Sunnis and Shias weren’t intent on killing each other,” Obama said. “And although it would not solve the entire problem, if we were able to get Iran to operate in a responsible fashion — not funding terrorist organizations, not trying to stir up sectarian discontent in other countries, and not developing a nuclear weapon — you could see an equilibrium developing between Sunni, or predominantly Sunni, Gulf states and Iran in which there’s competition, perhaps suspicion, but not an active or proxy warfare.”
Related: U.S. Spends Billions in World’s Most Corrupt Country
- Syria: Obama said he feels confident that he made the right decisions on Syria by pressing diplomatically for a dismantling of chemical weapons facilities but avoiding direct military intervention against the Assad regime. Still, he said, he is “haunted” by all the carnage there. He added: “It is very difficult to imagine a scenario in which our involvement in Syria would have led to a better outcome, short of us being willing to undertake an effort in size and scope similar to what we did in Iraq."
- Marijuana: Obama said that marijuana is not “more dangerous than alcohol” and that he is most concerned about the effect of drug laws on minorities and the poor. “Middle-class kids don’t get locked up for smoking pot, and poor kids do,” he said. Obama said he supports efforts by Colorado and Washington State to move forward with legalization and decriminalization of pot.
- Edward Snowden and NSA Leaks: The president said he does not regard the leaks by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden as comparable to Daniel Ellsberg’s leaks of the Pentagon Papers or other leaks vindicated by history. Obama said the massive NSA data leaks by Snowden had “put people at risk” but revealed nothing illegal. Asked about the prospect of a deal with Snowden to get him to surrender, Obama responded, “I do not have a yes/no answer on clemency for Edward Snowden. This is an active case, where charges have been brought.”
Related: Is Edward Snowden Working with the Russians?
- Obama’s Circle of Intimates: Not surprisingly, the president’s circle of friends is extraordinarily limited – and has been since his days as a student at Columbia University and Harvard Law. Obama’s favorite company is a small ensemble of Chicago friends—Valerie Jarrett, Marty Nesbitt and his wife, Anita Blanchard, an obstetrician, and Eric and Cheryl Whitaker, prominent doctors on the South Side. During the first Presidential campaign, Obama and the First Lady took a vow of “no new friends.”
- NFL Concussion Controversy: Obama says he has no problems watching football despite reports of severe concussions and retired players with brain damage. “I would not let my son play pro football,” he said. “But . . . these guys, they know what they’re doing.”
Top Reads from The Fiscal Times:
