How Obama Blew the Entire Last Year

It doesn’t get much bet­ter than the ex­hil­ar­a­tion Barack Obama felt when he looked out at the hun­dreds of sup­port­ers packed in­to Mc­Cormick Place at 12:38 on the morn­ing of Nov. 7, 2012. There he was, in his ho­met­own of Chica­go, flushed with vic­tory, only the 15th in­cum­bent ever reelec­ted to a second pres­id­en­tial term. It didn’t seem at all boast­ful when he pro­claimed to cheers that the na­tion had just “voted for ac­tion, not polit­ics as usu­al.”

Graphic: A timeline of Obama's Approval Rating

Now, a year later, here he is, in Wash­ing­ton, sobered by a suc­ces­sion of set­backs and no longer quite so sure that he is see­ing any­thing but polit­ics as usu­al. For the pres­id­ent, it has been a very tough year. Al­most noth­ing that Obama pub­licly pre­dicted would fol­low his reelec­tion has come to pass. He had op­tim­ist­ic­ally pro­claimed in a Rolling Stone in­ter­view that his vic­tory “might break the fever” with Re­pub­lic­ans who had de­clared their top goal was to deny him a second term. With him nev­er again ap­pear­ing on a bal­lot, he said then, his hope was that Re­pub­lic­ans “might say to them­selves, ‘You know what? We’ve lost our way here. We need to re­fo­cus on try­ing to get things done for the Amer­ic­an people.’ “

When CN­BC’s John Har­wood re­minded Obama of that state­ment in a re­cent in­ter­view, the pres­id­ent clung to the hope that “the ma­jor­ity of Re­pub­lic­ans around the coun­try” want to work with him. But he ac­know­ledged that doesn’t seem to in­clude Re­pub­lic­ans in Wash­ing­ton. Claim­ing, “I have bent over back­wards to work with the Re­pub­lic­an Party,” he ad­ded, “Am I ex­as­per­ated? Ab­so­lutely, I’m ex­as­per­ated.”

This, after all, is a pres­id­ent who thought he would be able to avoid most second-term traps. In­stead, Obama has suffered through one of the most daunt­ing rol­louts ever for the second half of a pres­id­ency. His troubles began less than 24 hours after his vic­tory speech, when he learned that CIA Dir­ect­or Dav­id Pet­raeus was quit­ting be­cause of an ex­tramar­it­al af­fair. Be­fore the month was out, the Re­pub­lic­an-led in­vest­ig­a­tions in­to Benghazi gained steam, with the con­tro­versy claim­ing its biggest vic­tim only five weeks after the elec­tion when Susan Rice with­drew her name from con­sid­er­a­tion for sec­ret­ary of State.

While this was de­vel­op­ing, Obama was en­gaged in fisc­al-cliff battles with Re­pub­lic­ans, se­cur­ing a vic­tory on high­er taxes for the wealth­i­est Amer­ic­ans but al­low­ing the GOP to lock in the bulk of the Bush-era tax cuts. And, as a back­drop to the Wash­ing­ton in­fight­ing, on the day after Rice’s with­draw­al, a gun­man shocked the na­tion by killing 20 chil­dren and six adults at an ele­ment­ary school in New­town, Conn.

The new year brought more bad news for the pres­id­ent. In­stead of go­ing for im­mig­ra­tion re­form as his top le­gis­lat­ive pri­or­ity, he squandered much of his polit­ic­al cap­it­al on a doomed ef­fort to en­act gun re­stric­tions. In March and April, House Re­pub­lic­ans battered him on Benghazi. In May, he learned that the In­tern­al Rev­en­ue Ser­vice had in­ap­pro­pri­ately mon­itored con­ser­vat­ive groups, put­ting him on the de­fens­ive. At the same time, he came un­der fire for Justice De­part­ment in­vest­ig­a­tions of journ­al­ists.

In June, Ed­ward Snowden star­ted leak­ing highly sens­it­ive and em­bar­rass­ing Na­tion­al Se­cur­ity Agency doc­u­ments. By Ju­ly, Snowden was de­mand­ing asylum in Rus­sia, lead­ing Obama to can­cel a planned sum­mit with Vladi­mir Putin at the pre­cise time he was look­ing to the Rus­si­an pres­id­ent to bail him out of a no-win battle with Con­gress over Syr­ia. It was also in June that the White House had to ac­know­ledge that Syr­ia had crossed Obama’s “red line” and used chem­ic­al weapons. That led to a re­quest to use mil­it­ary force that seemed doomed be­fore Putin stepped in.

Obama’s an­nus hor­rib­il­is wasn’t over, of course. Still to come was the badly botched rol­lout of the Af­ford­able Care Act, a mess still await­ing a fix. The res­ult, on the one-year an­niversary of his reelec­tion, is that Obama finds him­self near a per­son­al low point in his ap­prov­al rat­ings. Gal­lup’s daily track­ing poll re­leased Tues­day had him at 39 per­cent ap­prov­al, only 1 point above his worst show­ing, in Oc­to­ber 2011. In the past 60 years, only Richard Nix­on (29 per­cent) and George W. Bush (38 per­cent) had lower rat­ings a year after their reelec­tion. (Ron­ald Re­agan was at 64 per­cent, Bill Clin­ton at 60, and Dwight Eis­en­hower at 58.)

Some of this is just bad luck. But some of Obama’s dif­fi­culties with Con­gress go back to the cam­paign he con­duc­ted in 2012 and were pre­dicted a year ago by Wil­li­am Gal­ston, Clin­ton’s top do­mest­ic-policy ad­viser in his first term. Writ­ing just days be­fore the elec­tion, Gal­ston warned that Obama would “enter his second term hold­ing a re­l­at­ively weak hand.” He lamen­ted that Obama was more fo­cused on tear­ing down his rival than build­ing a man­date for ac­tion in the second term. Today, Gal­ston asks Na­tion­al Journ­al, “What kind of for­ward thrust did the pres­id­ent get out of the 2012 cam­paign?” The an­swer, he says, is “al­most noth­ing.” And that, he adds, al­lows side con­tro­ver­sies to loom lar­ger. “The ab­sence of a clearly etched and pub­licly sup­por­ted second-term agenda cre­ates a kind of polit­ic­al va­cu­um in­to which prob­lems can surge.”

Add to that those House Re­pub­lic­ans who think their man­date for ob­struc­tion trumps the pres­id­ent’s man­date. “In a sense, they don’t ac­cept the res­ults of the pres­id­en­tial elec­tion,” says Bill Schneider of the mod­er­ate Demo­crat­ic group Third Way. “To them, it is still Novem­ber 2010 and they are still op­er­at­ing on that man­date.” Giv­en that GOP mind-set, Schneider says, it was “a bit na­ive” of Obama to think that his win would “break the fever.” Com­bine that na­iv­ete with bad luck, and there isn’t much doubt that the ex­hil­ar­a­tion of Mc­Cormick Place is just a dis­tant memory.