USA TODAY: …In his State of the Union address, delivered precisely six months ago Monday, [President Barack] Obama outlined a scaled-down agenda for his sixth year in office, acknowledging the difficulty of passing legislation in a gridlocked Congress and vowing to use “the pen and the phone” to get things done. Now even those circumscribed ambitions have been overshadowed by crises overseas that are demanding his attention and buffeting his presidency…
For Obama, the world has become a dramatically more problematic place in recent weeks, from the Israeli pounding of Palestinians in Gaza to Russia’s role in the shootdown of a Malaysian jetliner over Ukraine. In Iraq, insurgents have scored unexpected territorial gains, a development that could affect the administration’s calculations about the planned withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan by the end of this year.
And at home, enacting any sort of major legislation over the next two and a half years is hard to imagine. The White House has shelved the idea of legislation to overhaul the immigration system, once hoped to be a centerpiece of his second term. Even his request for emergency funding to deal with the influx of children from Central America is stalled on Capitol Hill… (more)
EDITOR: President Obama is a disciplined and result oriented statesman. He has an agenda for the coming two years, he will do his best not to be distracted or deterred, and he will accomplish as much as humanly possible with the remaining two years.
The article refers to his predecessor’s lame duck status, but President George W. Bush was almost totally discredited due to the wars he was conducting and many other blunders.
The 40% supposed support for the president is misleading. Many on the left are included because they feel he has not done enough for their causes. If he were seeking a second term and faced with a Republican opponent, he likely would be re-elected .
