Chapter 7

The Comeback President

Having humiliated President Barack Obama in the 2010 elections, the Republicans turned immediately to winning back the White House in 2012. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell even vowed to defeat any legislation the administration initiated. Their strategy seemed to work. Throughout this period the president’s poll numbers hovered below 50 percent. Yet, in 2012 he was elected to a second term.¹

Despite the polls, Obama remained steadfastly committed to the same principles that guided the first two years of his presidency. Facing the reality of Republican control of the House and the dilution of Democratic control of the Senate, he began to call increasingly for civility and legislative compromise on Capitol Hill. His hope for a racially, ethnically, and socially diverse society had always been predicated on building a consensus even among opposing groups, but after 2010 he gave new emphasis to finding common ground with Republicans. Remaining the same was his ideal of a middle-class society predicated on free enterprise principles and marketplace consumerism.

The Lame-Duck Congress

As Obama began his third year as president in 2011, he faced a more difficult situation than when he first took office in 2009. Gone was the hope he elicited when he won the 2008 election. Gone was also Democratic control of both houses of Congress. Not only was the House now run by Republicans and the Democratic majority in the Senate reduced to just six seats, which, by invoking the sixty-vote cloture rule, made it possible for the Republicans to keep the Democrats from passing legislation, most of the newly elected members of the House and the Senate were indebted to the Tea Party for their election. Former Democrats and moderate Republicans were replaced by a new group of congress members determined to repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA), make major cutbacks in the budget at the expense of entitlements programs, and work to defeat the president in 2012.²

Before the 112th Congress convened in January, the outgoing Democratic-controlled Congress met for a lame-duck session, which the president used to push through legislation providing additional stimulus to the economy. He also won repeal of a policy known as “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” (DADT), established during the Clinton administration, which prohibited gay members of the military from acknowledging their sexual orientation, and he gained passage of a new START agreement (Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty) with Russia requiring both superpowers to make further reductions in their nuclear arsenals.

He was able to pass the stimulus package only by working closely with the incoming reduced leadership. The measure maintained the Bush cuts and reduced the 6.2 percent Social Security payroll tax by 2 percent for one year, letting average workers making $50,000 a year increase their take-home pay by approximately $1,000. It also added ninety-nine weeks of jobless benefits to unemployed workers, and extended tuition tax credits, the child tax credit, and the earned income tax benefit. In exchange for these Republican concessions, Obama agreed to Republican demands to include in the extension of the estate taxes the wealthiest 2 percent of taxpayers, despite his previous promises to the contrary. The legislation he approved also reduced for two years estate taxes from 50 to 35 percent while increasing the exemption on these estates from $1 million to $5 million. Finally, it adjusted upward the amount of income a taxpayer could earn before being subject to the alternative minimum tax and allowed businesses to write off the entire costs, instead of 50 percent, of certain equipment purchases. Since no provisions were included in the measure to pay for it, the cost of what amounted to a second stimulus package around the size of the first package in 2009, was added to the national debt.³

Immediately Republicans attacked the massive bill for adding to the debt, while Democrats on the left complained that, contrary to his long-standing promises, Obama skewed the tax cuts too much to the nation’s wealthiest citizens. The president did not help his cause when he called liberal opponents of the measure “sanctimonious.”⁴

Most commentators agreed, though, that the measure represented a significant victory for the president. “At a moment of political weakness,” Dan Baltz of the Washington Post wrote, “the tax package provided [Obama] the vehicle to quickly reassert that part of his political personality at a time when he needed the public to take a fresh look at him.” David Axelrod, the president’s senior adviser, and others close to Obama denied this was the case. “His attitude is we’ve got goals to move this economy forward, strengthen the middle class, deal with our long-term competitive challenges, and we shouldn’t be dogmatic about how we achieve them.” Axelrod then added that Obama’s basic view was not “ ‘Go out and find me some centrist positions to signify some sort of change in positioning.’ That’s not what he is doing.” In addition to the stimulus package, the president sought to pass legislation he had tabled during his first two years in office including repealing DADT and approving the new START agreement.⁵

Before President Clinton’s administration, official policy had been not to allow homosexuals to serve in the military. At the time Clinton became president, most commanders continued to oppose having gays in the military on the basis that they would destroy the esprit de corps and teamwork essential on the battlefield. They also viewed gays as potential security risks. As a compromise between the military’s exclusionary policy and the increasingly influential gay community who wanted inclusion of gay people in all walks of life, Clinton implemented DADT, which the gay community found offensive because it said that gays could serve in the military and die for the country only if they kept their sexual orientation private. ⁶

Having felt it necessary to delay repeal of DADT because of more pressing needs, Obama had faced growing anger within the gay community ever since he chose Rick Warren, a megachurch pastor, best-selling author, and an outspoken opponent of gay marriage, to deliver the invocation at his inauguration as president. Since the implementation of DADT, almost fourteen thousand gay service members had been discharged from the service because of their sexual preferences. Several cases of service members able to speak Arabic, who had come out in the media, highlighted what seemed like the absurdity of the DADT policy.⁷

Even during the campaign Obama had championed gay rights, including repeal of DADT, which he considered within the context of a litany of civil rights measures he strongly supported, including the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009 (his first major piece of legislation as president) and the Matthew Shephard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2009, named after two young men who had been brutally tortured and murdered in 1998, the former because he was gay and the latter because he was Black. He also looked at repeal of DADT from the perspective of his own goal of a more inclusive society. “Who do we consider a true member of the American family, deserving of the same rights, respects, and concern that we expect of ourselves?” he asked himself. “I believed in defining that family broadly—it included gay people as well as straight,” he answered, “and it included immigrant families that had put down roots and raised kids here… . How could I believe otherwise, when some of the same arguments for their exclusion had so often been used to exclude those who looked like me?”⁸

Finally, Obama wanted to hold onto the waning support of the gay community, who were disappointed that, in a speech in October at a dinner of the Human Rights Campaign, a gay activist group, Obama had promised to repeal DADT, but had provided no timeline or specifics.⁹

For all these reasons, the president was determined to repeal DADT before the Republicans, many of whose incoming members had campaigned against gay rights, took control of the House. In his first State of the Union address in January 2010, he called explicitly for repeal of DADT. At the same time, Obama understood that there remained strong opposition in the military to allowing gays to serve openly and that without the support of Secretary of Defense Bob Gates and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the policy would run into insurmountable roadblocks.¹⁰

Aware of Obama’s views on DADT, both Gates and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Michael Mullen, decided to support its repeal. In February 2010, they testified to this effect before the Senate Armed Services Committee, but they insisted upon six months to win over the support of military commanders and to draw up plans for fully integrating gays into the services. Despite ongoing opposition from some gay activists, who continued to believe Obama was not moving fast enough, and from influential lawmakers like Ike Skelton of Missouri, the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, and John McCain of Arizona, the senior Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, both of whom strongly opposed allowing gays to serve in the military, the president agreed to a study, and established the Comprehensive Review Working Group to evaluate how it might be done.¹¹

Over the spring and summer he continued to defend his policy of moving steadily but cautiously toward repealing DADT. Working in favor of lifting the ban immediately were cases making their way through the judiciary challenging the constitutionality of DADT. In a case originally brought in 2004 by Log Cabin Republicans (a group of gay Republicans) a federal judge in October ordered the military to stop administering DADT. The message of the court was clear. Unless the Pentagon took immediate steps toward integrating gays into the military, the courts would make them do it.¹²

Because the president believed more time was needed before the military services completed their plan for open service, his administration asked for a stay on the implementation of the judge’s ruling. Even though this decision continued to turn gay activists against the president, trying to achieve change through consensus rather than confrontation remained his approach to repeal, which, he continued to maintain, was his ultimate goal. It had, however, “to be done in a way that is orderly.” Finally, at the end of November the Pentagon issued its plan for integrating the services, concluding, as Obama expected, that open service posed no serious risks.¹³

There remained high-level resistance to repeal of the ban on gays in the military, and McCain carried out his threat of filibustering against the repeal provision that the administration had included in the defense authorization act. At this point, the White House moved into action, getting House Speaker Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Reid to introduce identical stand-alone repeal measures on their sides of Capitol Hill and using the internet to urge millions of Obama’s supporters to pressure Republicans to support the legislation. On December 15, the House passed the measure by a vote of 250 to 175. After holding two days of hearings during which Gates and Mullen testified in favor of immediate repeal, Reid brought an identical bill to the Senate floor on December 18. Having secured enough Republican votes to defeat another filibuster effort, he then moved for a final vote on the stand-alone measure, which the Senate approved by a vote of 65 to 31. On December 22, the president signed the bill into law. It was a major achievement for him in the waning hours of the lame-duck Congress.¹⁴

On that same day, Obama achieved another significant victory when the Senate ratified the New START Treaty with Russia that the president had signed in April with Russian president Dmitry Medvedev, exactly one year after he had made a major speech in Prague’s historic Hradcany Square calling for nuclear disarmament. The agreement replaced the original START Treaty, signed by Presidents George H. W. Bush and Mikhail Gorbachev in 1991. It called for reducing the number of deployed strategic nuclear warheads to 1,550 (about a third lower than existing arsenals) and cutting in half the number of launchers (missiles and bombers) to a ceiling below 700. It also included provisions for inspection and verification of these stockpiles.¹⁵

In signing the agreement, the president remarked that it was part of his commitment to “resetting” relations between Russia and the United States, which had “drifted” over the past several years. It was also meant to have worldwide significance and to be a warning to Tehran that it faced strong economic sanctions if it flouted the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which Iran had earlier signed. “Nuclear weapons are not simply an issue for the United States and Russia,” he emphasized. “A nuclear weapon in the hands of a terrorist is a danger to people everywhere.” By continuing to violate the terms of NPT, Tehran risked creating an arms race in the Middle East, which the world would not tolerate. By signing the agreement, Obama was also telling the world that he was serious about working toward a nuclear-free world.¹⁶

Once the New START agreement with Russia was signed, the president still faced the difficult task of getting the needed two-thirds of the Senate to ratify the pact. That meant he had to have the support of at least nine Republicans along with the unanimous backing of the Democratic caucus to win approval. He did not have those votes. Realizing that the agreement stood little chance of being approved in the incoming Senate, he decided to add ratification of New START to the already crowded agenda of the lame-duck Congress. After meeting again with President Medvedev during an economic summit in Seoul in November, he reiterated his pledge to push the treaty through Congress.¹⁷

Shortly after returning to Washington, Obama held a meeting at the White House of both Republican and Democratic leaders to emphasize the importance of ratifying the New START Treaty. “There is no higher national security priority for the lame duck session of Congress,” he told them. “The stakes for American national security are clear, and they are high… . We cannot afford to gamble on our ability to verify Russia’s strategic nuclear materials, or in maintaining a strong sanctions regime against Iran.”¹⁸

In the weeks remaining before the 111th Congress ended, the president had Pentagon generals and arms control advocates join forces in lobbying for the New START agreement. He also enlisted the support of high-ranking Republicans, including five former secretaries of state and former president George H. W. Bush, who argued the treaty was essential for the nation’s security.¹⁹

On December 18, the day after the Senate voted to repeal “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell,” the White House instructed Reid to file for a cloture vote ending debate on the ratification legislation. After winning the vote on cloture, thirteen Republicans defied their leaders by joining the entire Democratic caucus in voting for the New START agreement. The final tally on December 22 was 71 to 26.²⁰

Several other measures that Obama had hoped the lame-duck Congress would approve never made it through the legislative process. The most notable of these was an agreement to provide a pathway to citizenship (the Dream Act) to those persons who had been brought by their parents to the United States when they were younger than eighteen, many of whom had no recollection of having lived elsewhere.²¹

As a number of commentators wrote, however, ratification of the New START Treaty was another major victory for the president—in several respects his most significant of the lame-duck Congress. In deciding to add ratification of the agreement to his agenda for the lame-duck session, Obama took an enormous risk. Not only did he need seven more Republican votes in addition to the two required for passage of his other agenda items, something several journalists thought he could never achieve in the last days of the 111th Congress, especially since several Democrats had their own doubts about the treaty, its defeat would have been a major setback for the administration’s entire foreign policy. It would have damaged Obama’s standing in the world, harmed the chances of resetting Washington’s relationship with Moscow, raised the possibility of another nuclear arms race, and made it more difficult for the president to negotiate other treaties. “It’s one of those things in life where failing to get it would be more important than actually what you get with it,” remarked George Perkovich, a scholar on nuclear nonproliferation at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.²²

More positively, while the New START Treaty still left Russia and the United States with enough nuclear warheads and delivery systems to blow up the world several times over, its reductions paved the way for further negotiations with Russia on nuclear weapons and the other issues that strained relations between the two countries. It also gave the president new confidence about his ability to work with the Republicans in the new Congress and erased many of the doubts that other world leaders were having about his abilities as leader of the free world. Finally, it stood as a warning to Iran that Washington and Moscow would work together in implementing increased economic sanctions against Tehran unless it curbed its ambition to become another nuclear power. Once more Obama was able to achieve his goal by a combination of active lobbying and a willingness to compromise on such issues as agreeing to adding additional funds for modernizing the military’s existing nuclear stockpiles and to an amendment excluding missile defense systems from the treaty, language to which Russia would still have to agree before it could ratify the treaty.²³

The president regarded his failure to win approval of the Dream Act “a bitter pillow to swallow.” That disappointment notwithstanding, he later commented pridefully on how much he had achieved during the lame-duck Congress and the renewed confidence it had given him to lead the nation in the coming years. We had “managed to pull off the most significant lame-duck session in modern history,” he recounted. Together the House and Senate had clocked forty-eight days in session and passed ninety-nine laws. Axelrod reported a rise in consumer confidence and in his approval ratings. “It was as if, for the span of a month and a half democracy was normal again… . What more might we have accomplished, I wondered, and how much further along would the economic recovery be, had this sort of atmosphere prevailed from the start of my term.”²⁴

The Recalcitrant 112th Congress

Any hope the president might have entertained that the accomplishments of the lame-duck Congress would carry over into the newly elected 112th Congress were quickly shattered. This was apparent during the debate on Capitol Hill over tax cuts and extending the federal debt. Cutting the debt, which increased during Obama’s first two years in office by an unprecedented $2.80 trillion dollars compared to $3.293 trillion during Bush’s two terms, had been a key issue for the Tea Party during the 2010 midterm elections. ²⁵

It was also a concern for the White House, which in early 2010 had appointed a bipartisan commission led by Erskine Bowles, a former chief of staff during the Clinton administration, and Alan Simpson, a former senator from Wyoming, to make recommendations for cutting the budget. Even though its final, controversial, report failed to receive the votes needed to make it out of the commission, it received widespread attention in the media, and its findings of $4 trillion in spending cuts and tax increases over twenty years, became the basis for much of the discussion that followed on Capitol Hill.²⁶

Although much of the increase in the debt was a result of an unpaid prescription drug program enacted during the Bush administration, the bank bailout, the economic stimulus act, lower tax receipts as a result of the recession, and the cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Republicans blamed it on the administration’s alleged wasteful spending. They sought to cut the debt by making major cuts in the very entitlement programs Obama promised to protect. He was determined not to let this happen. Instead, he favored eliminating tax cuts for the wealthiest taxpayers passed during Bush’s presidency while maintaining them for lower- and middle-class taxpayers. He also wanted to keep the tax credits for lower- and middle-class wage earners approved during his administration.²⁷

On April 11, the president delivered a major speech at George Washington University on fiscal policy and the debt crisis. Since the very establishment of the country, he began his remarks, Americans have put their “faith in free markets and free enterprise as the engine of America’s wealth and prosperity.” We are “rugged individualists” with a “healthy skepticism of too much government.” At the same time, Americans believed in the need for government to “do together what we cannot do for ourselves… . And so we contribute to programs like Medicare and Social Security” and other programs like unemployment insurance and Medicaid.²⁸

The federal government also provided unemployment for those who have lost jobs through no fault of their own, and Medicaid for senior citizens in nursing homes, poor children, and those with disabilities. These are commitments that needed to be retained, Obama emphasized. Not only was the US a better nation because of them, “we would not be a great country without” them. In paying for them, wealthier individuals should bear a greater share of the tax burden than the middle class or those less fortunate, “not because we begrudge those who’ve done well—we rightly celebrate their success, [but because of] our belief that those who have benefited the most from our way of life can afford to give back a little bit more.”²⁹

Obama recognized he needed to practice fiscal restraint and rein in the federal debt, but he made clear he would not do this at the expense of the economic recovery taking place or “the investments we need to grow, create jobs, and help us with the future.” His dilemma was how to cut spending while protecting programs like Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security, providing for essential services like national defense, and looking to the future with investments in such areas as education and medical research.³⁰

The president’s response to this fundamental question was to reject the budget released by House Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, who was sitting in the audience. The Ryan proposal called for drastic cuts in vital services with the goal of achieving $4 trillion in cuts over ten years. Not knowing that Ryan was present for his speech, Obama attacked his plan repeatedly and harshly. Pursuing this path, he said, “would lead to a fundamentally different America than the one we’ve known certainly in my lifetime.” It painted a very pessimistic view of crumbling roads and collapsing bridges and of bright young Americans unable to go to college because we “can’t afford to send them… . It’s a vision that says Americans can’t afford to keep the promise we’ve made to care for our seniors… . It’s a vision that says up to 50 million Americans have to lose their health insurance in order for us to reduce the deficit,” while at the same time affording “more than $1 trillion in new tax breaks for the wealthy.”³¹

Instead, Obama proposed reducing the deficit by $4 trillion over twelve years. His approach, he said, was based on the recommendations of the Bowles-Simpson commission and the $1 trillion in reductions he had included in his 2012 budget as a result of planned troop withdrawals from Afghanistan and Iraq. In deciding on budget cuts, every program would be put on the table, including programs “he care[d] deeply about.” They would also have to include significant reductions in defense spending. What the president would not do was sacrifice core investments for future growth. “We will invest in medical research. We will invest in clean energy technology. We will invest in new roads and airports and broadband access… . We will do what we need to compete, and we will win the future.”³²

A heated debate followed the speech on Capitol Hill during which the president was attacked even by moderate commentators for embarrassing Ryan, and by conservative Tea Party Republicans who tied major budget cuts in entitlement programs to raising the debt ceiling (the amount the Treasury was allowed to borrow in order to pay the nation’s bills). The possibility that the government might be forced to default on the debt sent havoc into the financial markets, resulting in a stock market trending downward but with major daily swings in stock prices. Even Minority Leader McConnell became irritated by what he considered the antics of such conservative members of the Senate as Jim DeMint of South Carolina, whom he later accused of “hijacking” the Tea Party movement by raising funds “from well-intentioned conservatives,” ostensibly to further conservative causes, but in fact to attack more moderate, but “the most electable Republicans.”³³

The debate over the deficit and debt ceiling began to extend beyond economic issues. As the former president later recounted, because of the Tea Party and individuals like the real estate developer and television personality Donald Trump, who at one time supported Obama but now began the birther movement accusing him of not having been born in the United States, he was even accused of being a Muslim socialist and a Manchurian candidate, who had been groomed from childhood to be at the highest levels of government. At first the president paid no attention to Trump, whom he “found it hard to take … too seriously,” and the radical fringe of the Republican Party, but as the fringe grew into a major movement, he became concerned about the nation’s future, and he placed much of the blame for what was happening on the media, especially Fox News but including also such respected news outlets as ABC, NBC, and CNN.³⁴

On several occasions in July the White House seemed to arrive at a far-reaching agreement (the so-called grand bargain) with the new Speaker of the House, John Boehner of Ohio, and Minority Leader McConnell in which both sides agreed to a major overhaul of the tax code and significant budget cuts in return for Republicans consenting to raise the debt ceiling. But while Obama and Boehner had developed a measure of trust for each other, McConnell disliked the president, whom he accused of lecturing to him and never really listening to Republican concerns over spending. When it became clear that enough conservatives, including House Majority Leader Eric Cantor of Virginia, who aspired to Boehner’s position, intended to vote with enough Democrats, unhappy because they felt the measure gave too much away to the Republicans, the negotiations broke down. Instead of blaming the budget stalemate on these recalcitrant legislators, Boehner and McConnell claimed the president had not acted in good faith in negotiating with them, maintaining that as the negotiators drew closer to an agreement, Obama kept moving the goal posts insisting that Republicans increase tax revenues.³⁵

The unraveling of the “grand bargain” only underscored for Obama and the Republican leadership the urgency of finding common ground in resolving the debt ceiling crisis before the government would have to default on its debts, estimated by the Treasury Department to happen on August 2. Already a new round of negotiations was underway between White House officials and the Boehner staff to reach an agreement short of a comprehensive one, but with a solution for the debt crisis that would extend through 2012, a concession Obama insisted upon in order to prevent Tea Party members in the House from using the debt ceiling as a bargaining chip in future negotiations over budget cuts.³⁶

On July 25, the president addressed the nation on the dangers of default. On the nation’s current course, he warned, the growing debt could do serious damage to the economy. Businesses would be less likely to hire workers in a country unable to balance its books. Interest rates would rise, and the nation would not have enough money to make job-creating investments in areas like education and infrastructure, or pay for vital programs like Medicare and Medicaid. The nation’s AAA credit rating would be downgraded.³⁷

Obama called again for an approach for solving the debt based on the recommendations of the Bowles-Simpson Commission, which involved increased taxes on the wealthiest taxpayers as well as cuts in entitlement programs. He rejected the latest Republican proposal, unveiled just a few hours earlier by Speaker Boehner, that provided for only a six-month extension of the debt ceiling. He closed his remarks by urging his audience to pressure their representatives in Washington to compromise on the debt ceiling. “History,” he said, “is scattered with the stories of those who held fast to rigid ideologies and refused to listen to those who disagreed.”³⁸

Following his address, lawmakers’ telephone lines were jammed with callers urging them to reach an agreement before August 2. The websites of key lawmakers, including Boehner, crashed as their constituencies weighed in on the debate over the debt ceiling. Boehner told unhappy conservatives in his caucus to “get your ass in line” on an agreement. Several more days followed of bickering among Republicans, and the defeat on Capitol Hill of two competing Republican and Democratic measures before the president was able to announce that an agreement had been reached over the deficit between the White House and the House and Senate leadership.³⁹

The measure approved by both House and Senate leaders provided for a complicated two-stage process in resolving the debt crisis that required the administration to come up with at least $1.2 trillion in budget cuts over ten years in exchange for increasing the debt ceiling by more than $2 trillion, which would last through the 2012 election. Anything less than $1.2 trillion in deficit reductions would trigger automatic across-the-board spending cuts (known as “sequestering”) split between defense and nondefense spending. On August 1, both the House and the Senate agreed to the deal, although enough House Republicans voted against the measure that it required a bloc of Democrats to join with Republicans in passing the legislation. The next day, Obama signed the legislation into law, just a few hours before the deadline set by the Treasury Department for preventing a default.⁴⁰

In his remarks announcing the deal, the president made clear that it was not the agreement he preferred, pointing out that it cut domestic spending as a percentage of the gross domestic product (GDP) to the lowest level since the Eisenhower administration. It was a level, however, that still allowed the administration “to make job-creating investments like education and research.” He urged Congress to take “bipartisan, common-sense steps” after the August recess to bolster job creation and encourage economic growth, including keeping the Bush taxes for middle-class families while allowing cuts for the wealthy to expire.⁴¹

In fact, the compromise was more a temporary patch than a permanent agreement for resolving the deficit and debt ceiling crisis. It pleased hardly anyone and, according to most commentators, it weakened Obama looking to the 2012 elections. Pressured by the Tea Party, Republican leaders warned that they would not appoint anyone to the special committee who might consider raising taxes, while the president’s announcement that “everything [was] on the table” infuriated left-leaning Democrats. They were angry that the White House did not pressure Republicans enough to include revenue increases, such as by closing loopholes for oil companies and removing tax deductions that benefited the wealthy. Democratic leaders threatened a hard line against cuts to Social Security and Medicare benefits. Worried about future crises over the debt ceiling and concerned that the US economy was stalling, business leaders issued dire warnings about the worldwide impact of the American economy. The major rating services, such as Standard and Poor’s, lowered their ratings on Treasury bills from AAA to AA+, causing an increase in interest rates. Investors in the stock market went on a selling spree. Major indexes dropped by as much as 4 percent after Obama announced the agreement.⁴²

As for the president, the whole experience of reaching an agreement on the debt ceiling, beginning with the breakdown of the “grand bargain,” altered the way he looked at Washington. According to David Plouffe, the bargain’s collapse was a “searing experience,” whose lesson was to forget negotiations and rely on the bully pulpit. “You’re never going to convince them by sitting around the table and talk about what’s good for the nation,” John Podesta said. “You had to demonstrate that there’s political pain if you don’t produce an acceptable outcome.” This did not mean that the president gave up on seeking common ground with Republicans. It did mean that he intended to appeal more to the public than he had in the past and negotiate from a position of strength rather than weakness.⁴³

Almost overshadowing the struggle in the nation’s capital over the budget and debt ceiling were developments in Middle East and North Africa where, in what was known as “the Arab Spring,” democratic change seemed on the march as local demonstrations, larger protest movements, and militant uprisings against autocratic leaders, spread throughout the region. Beginning in Tunisia, anti-government actions blanketed the entire area as far away as Yemen in the southernmost part of the Arabian peninsula. In three of the most important nations in the area, Egypt, Libya, and Syria, the uprisings led to the overthrow of Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak and civil wars against Libyan leader, Muammar al-Qaddafi, and Syrian president Bashar al-Assad. Unfortunately for the protestors—and much to the disappointment of the White House—most of these experiments in democracy had limited success or failed entirely. The one exception was Tunisia where the Arab Spring began and where a democratically elected government was established.⁴⁴

Throughout the uprisings in the Middle East, Obama was excoriated by both the political left and the political right, either for not giving, or giving too much, support to the protestors or the leaders in power. In fact, the president carried out a circumspect policy, basic to which was avoiding increased American involvement in the region in the manner of his predecessor, George Bush. In part this was because he believed in the efficacy of the grassroots movement taking place there, which, he was persuaded, would bring about reform without heavy-handed tactics on his part. In part, this was because he wanted to decrease America’s footprint in the region.⁴⁵

Of increasingly more concern to the president than developments in the Middle East was making sure that nuclear weapons were kept out of the hands of terrorist organizations, such as Al-Qaeda, which continued to operate in the mountainous region of southwest Afghanistan and northeast Pakistan, and of rogue states such as Iran and North Korea. His eyes also turned increasingly to China, which was already an economic and military behemoth that threatened American and allied interests in the South Asian Sea.⁴⁶

The Arab Spring did not come as a complete surprise to the president. As early as the previous August, he had considered the possibility of democratic change in the Middle East and instructed his national security staff to prepare strategies for supporting political reform when autocracy was challenged in the region. He was surprised, however, by the scope of the uprisings that swept the region in late 2010 and early 2011. He was deeply concerned about how responsive the repressive regimes might be to the demands for change. He was especially worried about Mubarak, who had ruled Egypt with an iron fist since 1981.⁴⁷

To avoid becoming bogged down in the Middle East, he responded to the Arab Spring by encouraging and nudging change in the region, but never openly promoting liberal democratic regimes in the manner of his predecessor George Bush. As much as he would have liked to see democratic institutions established throughout the region, he acted more as a pragmatic realist than as a political idealist. He responded to the uprisings and demands for democratic reform on a country-by-country basis, sometimes more forcibly in the name of reform than in other countries, such as Bahrain, where he supported the ruling monarch even as he thwarted reform.⁴⁸

The largest crowds of the Arab Spring were in Cairo where, just a few months earlier, Obama had delivered a speech at Cairo University in which he promised to replace President Bush’s policy of unilateralism with one more respectful of the history and culture of the Arab world. Beginning at the end of January and lasting eighteen days, hundreds of thousands of Egyptians poured into its Tahrir Square, the site of a number of earlier demonstrations calling for the overthrow of the Mubarak regime. The protests quickly spread throughout Egypt, including its second largest city, Alexandria.

As the protests grew larger, Mubarak, who, at age 82, had an irregular heartbeat and was widely reported to be seriously ill, agreed to cede all power to the vice president, but in a speech to the nation shortly thereafter, he announced that he intended to remain in power until his term ended. He also tried to cut off the protestors’ access to the social media. In response, the demonstrations grew increasingly violent and remained so until Vice President Suleiman announced that Mubarak had resigned and transferred all his powers to the military, which quickly proceeded to dissolve the parliament, suspend the Egyptian Constitution, appoint a new prime minister, and promise democratic elections for the election of a new president.⁴⁹

When those elections were held, the Muslim Brotherhood, led by the newly elected president, Mohamed Morsi, took control of the government. As Morsi attempted to turn Egypt, a largely secular nation, into an Islamic state, the military took control of the government once more, suspending the constitution of 2012, arresting Morsi, appointing an interim president and then naming General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi as Egypt’s new leader.⁵⁰

Throughout this period Obama applied increasing pressure on Mubarak to resign. He did so, despite being urged by hardliners within his administration, including even Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and by Saudi Arabia and Israel to halt his support of the protestors, and by critics who believed that he was not being forceful enough in getting the Egyptian leader to leave office. “It’s tempting and it would be easy, to go out day after day with cathartic statements that make us feel good,” explained Benjamin J. Rhodes, Obama’s deputy national security director. “But ultimately, what’s most important is achieving outcomes that are consistent with our values, because if we don’t, those statements will be long-forgotten.”⁵¹

As soon as Mubarak left office, the president made a speech congratulating the Egyptian people on their historic revolution. “The word Tahrir,” he remarked, “means liberation… . And forevermore it will remind us of the Egyptian people—of what they did, of the things that they stood for, and how they changed their country, and in doing so changed the world.” ⁵²

Less than a week later, he had to contend with a revolution in Libya against the dictatorial regime of Muammar al-Qaddafi. For forty-two years, the Libyan people had lived under a leader who, at times, seemed mentally unbalanced. Swept up by the fervor of the Arab Spring, the revolution quickly evolved into a civil war in which anti-Qaddafi forces took control of much of the eastern part of the country, including cities and towns along the Mediterranean and, battled pro-Qaddafi forces in Benghazi, Libya’s second largest city.⁵³

Unlike Western Europe, the US economy was not heavily dependent on Libya’s oil. In contrast to its European allies, Washington did not have a vital stake in restoring stability to Libya. For that reason, many “realists” within the administration, including Defense Secretary Gates and National Security Adviser Tom Donilon, believed the United States should stay out of the Libyan struggle. Obama felt otherwise. He was under pressure from the allies and the more humanitarian-inclined members of the administration, including UN Ambassador Susan Rice, Samantha Power, a member of the NSC in charge of human rights issues, and, later, Secretary Clinton to intervene in the war. Like them, he was concerned by Qaddafi’s statements that he was going to employ his considerable military power to put down the insurgency in Libya’s eastern provinces and annihilate Benghazi.⁵⁴

Although the president did not believe the United States should be the world’s policeman in preventing genocidal acts, especially when the national interest was not involved, he also felt there were instances when intervention might have been justified, such as during the genocidal war in Rwanda in 1994 where, in 100 days, 800,000 people were killed. He was deeply impressed by Power’s study of past genocides in the twentieth century, including the failure of the Clinton administration to respond in Rwanda. In a statement the White House issued on January 9, 2009, to mark the fifteenth anniversary of the genocide, he stated: “The memory of these events also deepens our commitment to act when faced with genocide and to work with partners around the world to prevent future atrocities.”⁵⁵

To prevent a humanitarian disaster and because Obama was assured the support of the Arab League and America’s European allies (Germany being a notable exception), and also because he believed a failure to support the anti-Qaddafi forces economically and militarily might discourage democratic forces in other Arab countries, he felt he had to intervene in Libya despite his concern about the legality of doing so. He froze Qaddafi’s assets, imposed an arms embargo, and established a no-fly zone over Libya. More important, he committed America’s air and sea forces, but not ground forces, against Qaddafi’s forces threatening the rebels.⁵⁶

Intended at first to keep Qaddafi from attacking his own people, the strikes from the air and from allied warships offshore turned into an all-out assault on Libya’s military. After the operation stopped Qaddafi on the outskirts of Benghazi, Obama continued to approve strikes in support of the insurgents. Frustrated that it was not being consulted about the intervention, the House rejected a bill authorizing the effort, but it did not cut funding for it. With the help they were receiving, including logistical and support troops on the ground, the insurgents launched a counterattack against Qaddafi, forcing him to flee Tripoli and go underground. In October, he was captured in his hometown of Sirte and executed.⁵⁷

Throughout the American involvement in Libya, Obama portrayed his decision to intervene as a limited, humane action on his part to prevent the destruction of a city the size of Charlotte, North Carolina. Although he hoped to topple Qaddafi from power through nonmilitary means, he emphasized he was not seeking regime change. “Broadening our mission to include regime change would be a mistake,” he told the American people at the end of March. “If we tried to overthrow Qaddafi our coalition would splinter” and we could repeat the mistake we made when sending US armed forces into Iraq. His administration “intervened to stop a massacre,” he concluded, and we will work “with other nations to hasten the day when Qaddafi leaves power.”⁵⁸

If the president’s explanation for US intervention in Libya seemed contradictory—not seeking regime change, but yet working to get Qaddafi to relinquish power—it appeared to work when the longtime Libyan tyrant fled into hiding. Unfortunately, the outcome remained a splintered nation with two different capitals, one in Benghazi and the other in Tripoli, and its exports of oil to Europe much lower than at the start of the war. In Libya, “the Arab Spring” turned into “the Arab Winter.”

Taking place about the same time as the civil war in Libya was another war in Syria against the regime of Bashar al-Assad, a seemingly mild-mannered British-trained ophthalmologist, who had taken power in 2000 following the death of his father, Hafez al-Assad, a cunning and brutal dictator. Although many experts on Syria anticipated the son would be more open to political reform than his father, he proved just as ruthless.⁵⁹

What set off the Syrian civil war was the death of a thirteen-year-old boy after attending a peaceful protest in April. When images of his body, which had been mutilated and burned, were released by someone filming his father pulling the covers off his dead son, they went viral. Demonstrations became violent, and Assad intensified the torture and killing of his opponents. By the summer, a full-scale civil war was underway in the country.⁶⁰

In contrast to the war in Libya, the White House did not come to the military assistance of the insurgents in Syria. As bad as Assad was, Obama felt the alternative to the Syrian dictator could be even worse, especially since there was not any organized opposition as in Libya but rather a divided group of political rivals, exiles, and armed militias. The White House was not under pressure from its allies to intervene. Unlike in Libya, a bombing campaign would also involve the killing of massive numbers of innocent civilians living in crowded neighborhoods throughout Syria. Russia, which had economic and strategic interests in Syria, might react strongly against any NATO interference in Syria. Assad had the backing of a well-disciplined and trained military with a strong and loyal officer corps. It would take far more than a war fought largely from the air and sea to topple him. The president was determined not to have a repeat of Iraq and Afghanistan.⁶¹

Both for strategic and humanitarian reasons, the administration felt it could not entirely ignore the plight of the Syrian people. Immediately, it supplied a token amount of $12 million to the anti-Assad forces for satellite-communications equipment and night-vision goggles. For the next two years, however, it struggled over whether to arm the so-called moderate rebels even as critics like former vice president Dick Cheney attacked the Oval Office for wobbling and equivocating.⁶²

Another issue confronting the president as the Arab Spring unfolded was how to respond to terrorist attacks against US interests in the Middle East and elsewhere. Terrorism had become a major worldwide problem going back to the 1970s when, in the United States, such diverse groups as the Weather Underground, the Symbionese Liberation Army, the Black Panthers, and the Jewish Defense League committed various acts of terrorism. Other terrorist incidents included airline hijackings and airline bombings at the rate of one a month.⁶³

For all of Obama’s attacks on the Bush administration for its conduct of the war against global terrorism, he differed little from Bush in terms of the vigor he applied to hunting down terrorists. Even during the campaign, he accompanied his appeals to principle with the implacable toughness of someone determined to wipe out terrorism. As president, he was faced with the question of whether he could order the killings of known terrorists wherever they were found while staying true to American values and the rule of law. He believed he could. While he ended the practice of torture, he expanded greatly the use of drones, including the killing of an American citizen, Anwar al Awlaki, a leader in the Yemeni affiliate of Al-Qaeda.⁶⁴

The killing of Awlaki in 2011 was only the most controversial of numerous drone attacks the president ordered against terrorist leaders. Almost from the time he took office, he and his advisers were impressed by the ruthless precision of drones. He had an issue, however, about their legality. As a Harvard-trained lawyer who taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago, he was always deeply concerned about the legality of the actions he took as president. That was one reason why he surrounded himself with some of the country’s most talented legal minds.⁶⁵

During the 2008 campaign, Obama questioned what he regarded as illegal acts Bush committed in the name of national security, such as when he used warrantless searches to identify terrorists and intercept their communications. What bothered him was not only that Bush violated someone’s civil liberties, but that he acted outside the law. At the beginning of his administration, he also told a group of civil libertarians that he wanted to limit the scope of presidential action in the fight against terrorism, reflecting another of his concerns about the expansion of executive power under Bush.⁶⁶

Still, the question for him remained whether it was possible to fight a war against terrorism within the rule of law. What convinced him that it was legal was the advice of the lawyers in his administration and the nearly successful attempt by a terrorist, Farouk Abdulmutallab, to set off a bomb on a large Airbus filled with passengers while nearing the end of a flight from Amsterdam to Detroit. The president was determined not to allow another 9/11 incident to happen. He was also deeply annoyed by the outcry following the arrest of Abdulmutallab over whether and when he should have been read his Miranda rights. The near miss of a mass murderer flying over the United States and the outcry over his rights had profound implications for his legal position.⁶⁷

Having decided it was legal to use drones in the war against terrorism, Obama greatly expanded drone attacks against suspected terrorist leaders. But his greatest achievement in this respect was the killing on May 2, 2011, of the leader of Al-Qaeda and the mastermind of 9/11, Osama bin Laden, by Navy SEALs. Bin Laden had evaded capture since he had slipped away from his mountain headquarters in Tora Bora during a failed siege eight years earlier. The hunt for him had gone cold, and President Bush had declared that his capture was not important.⁶⁸

Obama thought otherwise. Reflective of his determination to eliminate all terrorist leaders, he entered office bent on hunting down the worst terrorist of all. By giving up on the hunt for bin Laden and his band of terrorists, the former president later reflected, and “instead defining the threat as an open-ended, all encompassing ‘War on Terror,’ we’d fallen into what I believed was a strategic trap—one that elevated al-Qaeda’s prestige, rationalized the Iraq invasion, alienated much of the Muslim world, and warped almost a decade of US foreign policy.”⁶⁹

After a meeting of his national security advisers in May 2009, he pulled aside his newly appointed CIA director Leon Panetta, his deputy national security adviser Tom Donilon, his chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, and his director of the National Counterterrorism Center Mike Leiter and directed them to find bin Laden. “Here’s the deal,” he told his four advisers. “I want this hunt for Osama bin Laden [and his second-in-command of Al-Qaeda, Ayman al-Zawahiri] to come to the front of the line. I worry that the trail has gone cold… . I want regular reports on this to me, and I want them starting in 30 days.”⁷⁰

In an operation known by the code word, “Geronimo,” the name given to bin Laden, the SEALS shot to death the leader of Al-Qaeda following a helicopter attack on his compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. The president did not inform Islamabad of the attack because Pakistan had not been fully cooperative with the United States in fighting the Taliban. In the global war to defeat terrorism, he believed nations had responsibilities as well as rights.⁷¹

The president approved the raid knowing there might be someone else, perhaps an Afghan warlord, living in the compound. His security team was never able to say with certainty that bin Laden was the one who could be seen taking daily walks around the gardens in the compound. The most optimistic assessments placed the probability that person was bin Laden as high as 95 percent. The Counterterrorism Center’s assessment was 40 percent. Obama placed the level of certainty at 50 percent. Nevertheless, he decided to go forward with the raid. “One of the things you learn as president is you’re always dealing with probabilities,” he later told a journalist writing about “Geronimo.” “No issue comes to my desk that is perfectly solvable… . That’s true of most of the decisions I make during the course of the day.”⁷²

Once the president determined that bin Laden was most likely living in the compound, he had to decide the best way to kill him. He considered several alternatives, including bombing the compound or using armed drones. He decided to employ the SEALS because it was the only way bin Laden’s death could be confirmed. By using the counterterrorist team, the US could also retrieve valuable intelligence believed to be within the compound. The issue of violating Pakistani sovereignty was raised but immediately dismissed.⁷³

Using Black Hawk helicopters designed to evade radar detection, the mission succeeded brilliantly, but it had the unanticipated consequence of further destabilizing the Pakistani government. The White House anticipated the raid would embarrass Islamabad. It did more than that. It underscored just how dangerous the situation in Pakistan was. Left unanswered after the raid was how the most wanted person in the world could hide out in a compound, outside the gates of a military academy, and close to the capital of an important American partner without a deep support structure?⁷⁴

Obama announced bin Laden’s death late on May 2 in a nine-minute address to the nation from the East Wing of the White House. Just a few hours earlier, he had attended the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. As was customary at this annual black-tie affair, he bantered with the audience, including directing a few humorous remarks at Donald Trump. The real estate developer and television personality grimaced at his roasting by the president, clearly not liking what he heard. Throughout the evening the president gave no hint of the top-secret military operation that had killed bin Laden. He was waiting for final confirmation that he was dead and had been given a proper Muslim funeral before his body was dropped into the Arabian sea. Earlier he had joined others involved in the planning of the raid to watch grainy transmissions of the operation in a small office across from the top-secret Situation Room.⁷⁵

News that bin Laden had been killed spread quickly throughout the country. Everywhere celebrations took place spontaneously. In big cities and small towns people took to the streets or celebrated in small gatherings the death of a man who had hit the homeland in a way never done before, taking down the Twin Towers in New York City, striking at the Pentagon, and threatening the Capitol or the White House before a group of passengers in an airplane in western Pennsylvania took control of the plane and crashed it into an open field.⁷⁶

Total deaths caused by bin Laden and the other terrorists involved in 9/11 neared three thousand. For almost a decade the Al-Qaeda leader had gone missing and had been nearly forgotten in the media. The celebrations that took place after Obama’s announcement became celebrations of the president as well. A crowd in front of the White House chanted “Obama got Osama! Obama got Osama!”⁷⁷

Despite the “catharsis” that he later described Americans feeling at the death of bin Laden, the former president later remembered wondering if it took the killing of a terrorist like him to recreate such feelings of national unity. The question “nagged” on him, he recalled. For all his pride and joy in successfully carrying out a such a dangerous and risky mission, he did not feel the same sense of “exuberance” he felt when the Affordable Care Act was passed. “I found myself imagining what America might look like if we could rally so that our government brought the same level of expertise and determination to reducing poverty or curbing greenhouse gases or making sure every family had access to decent day care,” he said.⁷⁸

Obama’s Reelection Campaign of 2012

Bin Laden’s killing had an immediate effect on the president’s chances for reelection in 2012. On April 11, a month before the raid on Abbottabad, he announced that he was seeking a second term. His announcement took place at a time when he was dealing not only with the Arab Spring, but with his struggle on Capitol Hill over budget cuts and the debt ceiling. Despite his achievements in his first two years in office, including his accomplishments during the lame-duck session of Congress, he was an unpopular leader whose administration seemed in disarray and who appeared incapable of leading.⁷⁹

Obama realized the difficulty he faced in seeking a second term. Speaking to his supporters, he noted the skepticism even within their ranks. “I know that a lot of you who were involved in the campaign earlier, over the last two years you’ve probably felt some frustration… . But I want everybody here to remember everything we’ve accomplished over the last two years, and the record of accomplishment in making a difference for ordinary people.”⁸⁰

To prepare for the campaign, the president shook up his White House staff. After his 2010 beating in the elections, he replaced Rahm Emanuel as his chief of staff with William Daley, the brother of Mayor Richard Daley and secretary of commerce during the Clinton administration. He also accepted the resignations of two of his most loyal aides, Senior Adviser David Axelrod, who was probably more responsible for his political career than anyone else, and Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, who had been with him since his 2004 campaign for the US Senate. He concluded that Emanuel was too abrasive, Axelrod was burned out, and Gibbs was needlessly contentious with the press. All three men had planned to resign for their own reasons, but Obama hastened their departures. He replaced Axelrod, who returned to Chicago to reprise his role as chief strategist for the campaign, with David Plouffe, who had managed his 2008 campaign, and Gibbs with Jay Carney, the top spokesman for Vice President Biden.⁸¹

In strategy sessions for the campaign, he made clear he would cooperate with the Republicans when he could and confront them when he could not. He would be the adult in the room above the political frays that angered the American public and motivated the Tea Party. Unfortunately for him, Trump, who was by then already considering running for president in 2012, claimed that the president was holding office illegally because he was born in Kenya. Even though the evidence of his birth in Hawaii was overwhelming, including a short form of his birth certificate, the accusation that he was an illegal president resonated with a fringe element of the population who, for several reasons, including the fact that he was Black, was determined to oust him from office in 2012.⁸²

Not until Obama was able to display a long version of his birth certificate, which Hawaii did not normally provide in place of a short form as proof of birth, did the so-called birther movement begin to dissipate. Even then, charges continued to circulate over some right-wing media that Obama was a Kenyan who shared the anti-colonial and anti-western views of the Kenyan people, including his father, grandfather, and other family still living in Kenya. One effect of the birther movement was to deflect his campaign away from the message it was trying to send about the president’s accomplishments during his first two years in office. Another was to raise new questions about his political beliefs and whether his presidency was legitimate.⁸³

Obama was also frustrated by the distraction the birther movement caused from his efforts on Capitol Hill, where he sought to work with Congress on a number of issues, ranging from the budget and debt ceiling to jobs, infrastructure, and education. In a short speech carried by all the networks in which he announced the release of the long form of his birth certificate, he made clear his frustration. “We live in a serious time right now,” he said, “and we have the potential to deal with the issues that we confront in a way that will make our kids and our grandkids and our great grandkids proud… . But we’re going to have to get serious to do it.”⁸⁴

Although a number of Republicans decided to run for their party’s nomination for president, Governor Mitt Romney of Massachusetts, who was able to win his office in an overwhelmingly Democratic state, emerged as the likely Republican nominee. Handsome and from a political family, the son of the former governor of Michigan, Romney made hundreds of millions of dollars as a founding partner in the investment firm, Bain Capital, and then almost single-handedly saved the beleaguered Salt Lake City Olympic games in 2002. As governor of the Bay State from 2003 to 2007, he passed what became a model for the Affordable Care Act. By the end of his term, he was openly running for president.⁸⁵

Romney still faced a number of opponents, including Governor Rick Perry (TX), former speaker of the house Newt Gingrich (GA), and former senator Rick Santorum (PA), and a number of other lesser-known candidates. But by April 2012, he had a commanding lead over all of them. Good organization and fund-raising, and the tradition within the party of selecting the next in line for the nomination, accounted for much of his lead. (Romney had come in second in 2008 to John McCain.) The fact that he had moved more to the political right during the primary campaign, even disowning his health-care act, which, he said, would only work on a state level, accounted for most of the rest.⁸⁶

As the campaign continued, it became clear that whoever won the Republican nomination would be running on a conservative platform. That nominee would try to reject the many accomplishments of the Obama administration, including the ACA. In response, the president, who faced primary opposition in a few states like Louisiana and Arkansas, where his nationally unknown opponent received 42 percent of the votes, decided to confront the Republican Party and rouse Democrats by doing what he did best: speaking directly to the American people. On December 6, 2011, he traveled to Osawatomie Kansas, the site of President Teddy Roosevelt’s famous “New Nationalism” speech of 1910, where he delivered a major speech on the economy. In no other address did the president state more clearly his vision of a middle-class nation predicated on free enterprise that rewarded creativity and entrepreneurship, but provided for government regulation to prevent the power of money from becoming too great, much as Teddy Roosevelt had envisioned in his speech at Osawatomie, almost a century earlier.⁸⁷

Attacking Republicans now in office for their corporate greed and lack of concern for those struggling to reach or remain in the middle class, Obama spoke out against the accumulation of wealth into the hands of a smaller percent of the population and the power of money that followed. “Long before the recession [of 2008] hit,” he remarked, “hard work stopped paying off for many people… . Fewer and fewer of the folks who contributed to the success of our economy actually benefited from that success.”⁸⁸

The president stressed that he was not against the free enterprise system. Nor did he oppose the accumulation of wealth. Quite the opposite. He believed free enterprise remained foundational to a new middle class built on entrepreneurship and hard work and that successful entrepreneurs should be rewarded handsomely. Unfortunately, Republicans had abandoned the principles enunciated by Teddy Roosevelt a century earlier. Through deregulation, regulators who “looked the other way or didn’t have the authority to look at all,” and changes in the tax laws favorable to large corporations and the wealthiest Americans, these Republicans allowed massive accumulations of wealth and power in the hands of a few.⁸⁹

The solution for Obama was to return to the principles of the New Nationalism enunciated by Roosevelt. Free enterprise should be allowed to flourish, but it should be regulated in a way that avoided excesses of wealth. Just as “there was in Teddy Roosevelt’s time, there is a certain crowd in Washington,” the president declared, “who for the last few decades, have said, let’s respond to this economic challenge with the same old tune. ‘The market will take care of everything.’ ” The theory has never worked. “We simply cannot return to this brand of ‘you’re on your own’ economics if we’re serious about rebuilding the middle class in this country.”⁹⁰

The choice for the voters in 2012 was clear. They could continue along the lines that stacked the deck for the wealthy. Or they could keep competition fair while ensuring the government had sufficient funds to protect the vulnerable and invest in research and education. What did this mean “for restoring middle-class security in today’s economy?” Obama asked. “Well, it starts by making sure that everyone in America gets a fair shot at success… . The race we want to win is a race to the top—the race for good jobs that pay well and offer middle-class security.”⁹¹

In the months that followed, the president pressed this theme of assuring opportunity for a new middle class. Government should not be the instrument of the wealthy. But neither should it promote dependency or be an obstacle to free enterprise and the entrepreneurial spirit that built the middle class. Its role, instead, should be limited. In his State of the Union address on January 24, 2012, he remarked: “I’m a Democrat. But I believe what Republican Abraham Lincoln believed: that government should do for people only what they cannot do better by themselves, and no more.”⁹²

His message was still one of hope. “As long as we are joined in common purpose, as long as we maintain our common resolve, our journey moves forward, and our future is hopeful,” he concluded in his State of the Union. But the hope the president offered in 2012 was more qualified than what he offered in 2008, with more emphasis on individual responsibility.⁹³

Despite the obstacles that Obama faced in getting reelected, he always held a lead in opinion polls against Romney. Some of those who voted for him in 2008 may have been disappointed at his seeming inability to deal with an economy in which unemployment remained high and wages were stagnant. Others may have been concerned that he appeared as a weak leader who could not even control his own staff, Progressives within his party may even have accused him of adopting the slogan “too big to fail” in dealing with the banking and financial structure they held responsible for the recession of 2008–2010.⁹⁴

The voters appeared willing, however, to give the president another opportunity to fulfill his promises of 2008. They appreciated his accomplishments as president, and they blamed Congress far more than they blamed him for the nation’s political and economic stagnation. They liked him personally and were impressed by his family life—by the fact that he set aside time whenever he was in the White House to have dinner with his family and to attend Malia’s and Sasha’s school activities.⁹⁵

In contrast to 2008, when Michelle Obama appeared at times a liability to her husband, she proved in 2012 to be an important asset in the campaign, just as she had become a popular First Lady as a result of her efforts on behalf of reducing child obesity and providing for military families. At the Democratic convention in Charlotte in September, which nominated Obama for a second term, she made a rousing speech that even conservative columnists acknowledged was a great success, tying her story and Barack’s to the American dream of parents’ being able, through hard work and initiative, to give their children a better life than their own.⁹⁶

The same voters were less impressed by Romney and his wife, Ann. The former governor seemed more a wealthy businessman than a politician, a candidate who appeared out-of-touch with the needs of most voters and whose views on issues seemed to change as the political winds changed. The fact that Romney was a Mormon also raised questions among some Christians as to whether the Mormon Church was a sect rather than a Christian church. As for Ann, she was a sympathetic figure who had been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 1998, and she delivered a well-received speech at the Republican nominating convention in August, in which she tried to humanize her husband. She seemed, however, to lack the poise, vibrancy, and common touch of the more experienced First Lady.⁹⁷

The president’s campaign operated on all cylinders, while Romney’s backfired time and again, sometimes for reasons beyond his control. At the Republican convention in Tampa during the week of August 27, a hurricane forced the cancellation of the first day of speeches. Governor Chris Christie (NJ) gave a keynote address that was more one about him than about the presumptive Republican candidate. The most memorable moment of the gathering was not any of its major speeches, but the surprise address by the actor, Clint Eastwood, in which he tried to inject humor into his presentation by talking to an empty chair, allegedly representing Obama. Although well received in the convention hall, he was ridiculed in the media. Ann Romney was embarrassed by the whole incident, and both she and her husband were distressed that Eastwood’s presence on stage took the spotlight away from him.⁹⁸

As his running mate, Romney chose Representative Paul Ryan, the fiscally conservative head of the Budget Committee, who proposed to replace the popular Medicare program with individual grants to eligible retirees. Ryan’s acceptance speech, in which he attacked the Obama administration for not living up to its promises of 2008, was panned in the press for falsely describing the president’s role in the shutdown of a GM plant in Ryan’s hometown of Janesville, Wisconsin. Romney’s own acceptance speech succeeded in humanizing the Republican. As a result of the convention, he even got a small bump in the opinion polls.⁹⁹

In contrast to the Republican convention, the Democratic gathering, held the following week in Charlotte, went off with only a few hitches. One high-powered speaker after another went onstage to praise the accomplishments of the Obama administration. There were no “Eastwood-like” events to take the spotlight away from the president. An opening night tribute to deceased Senator Ted Kennedy showed the former senator endorsing Obama for president four years earlier and sparring effectively with Romney, who sought his Senate seat in 1994. The video threw the packed convention hall into near frenzy.¹⁰⁰

On the third night of the convention, former president Bill Clinton delivered an electrifying speech that once more kept the delegates on their feet applauding and cheering for almost the entire forty-eight-minute speech in which he nominated the president for reelection and mocked the Republicans for refusing to work with him. They “hate” him, he said. Even though the former president spoke beyond the two hours allotted by the networks for live coverage of the convention, they kept him on the air. After the speech, Obama came on stage to embrace his former rival. It was a stunning close to end a successful day.¹⁰¹

The next day Vice President Biden was chosen by acclamation to be the president’s running mate a second time. Then the president was nominated for a second term unanimously. (The few delegates won by Obama’s opponents had been disqualified due to lack of a delegate slate.) In his acceptance speech later that night before a crowd of twenty thousand, the president continued with the theme that while he had accomplished much during his first term, the country’s business remained undone. He proposed a “harder” path to a “better place.” “I won’t pretend the path I’m offering is quick or easy; I never have,” he said. “You didn’t elect me to tell you what you wanted to hear. You elected me to tell you the truth. And the truth is, it will take more than a few years for us to solve challenges that have built up over decades.” Like the convention as a whole, the president’s comments were well received. In contrast to the small bump in the polls following the Republican convention, the Democratic bump was significant.¹⁰²

A week after the Democratic gathering a video was leaked to the liberal magazine, Mother Jones, showing Romney speaking to a group of wealthy Republican donors at a fund-raiser in Boca Raton, Florida. In his remarks, Romney could be heard saying that in the campaign (and presumably in his administration if elected president) he could ignore the 47 percent of voters who did not pay any taxes (clearly meaning federal taxes) and would never vote for him. These are people, he added, “who are dependent upon government, who believe they are victims, who believe government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health-care, to food, to housing, to you-name it… . And they will vote for this president no matter what.”¹⁰³

As critics of the video pointed out almost immediately, while the 47 percent figure was technically correct, it included many low-wage workers and workers with families, who, after exemptions, did not owe the government anything. It also included retirees and the elderly who paid taxes while they were gainfully employed but who no longer had a taxable income high enough on which to pay taxes. The largest percentages of those not paying taxes also lived in states that normally voted Republican.¹⁰⁴

After the election, Romney acknowledged in an interview that his “47 percent” comments “did real damage to my campaign.” Most commentators agreed. What was so damaging was that because everything he said was documented on video, there was no way he could walk back his remarks, such as by claiming they were taken out of context or that he had been misquoted.¹⁰⁵

Also going for Obama in the campaign was the brilliantly conceived technical infrastructure that his campaign developed in his headquarters in Chicago. Most political analysts attributed a good part of the president’s success in 2008 to the sophisticated technology his team, led by David Plouffe, had put in place that year, which allowed the campaign to identify likely Obama voters and use that information to bring them. The infrastructure put in place in 2012 was more sophisticated than even that, making it possible for the campaign to identify and solicit undecided voters and to allow the field offices to share information in ways not possible in 2008.¹⁰⁶

The campaign that followed turned out be one of the more negative in recent years. Both sides ran endless ads attacking the other for the negativity of the campaign. The president warned that, if elected, Romney would turn the clock backward eliminating the gains for the middle class achieved since the end of World War II. In contrast, he promised to advance the efforts to bring more Americans into the middle class begun during this first administration. The Republican nominee countered by accusing what he called an “incompetent” administration led by a weak president of failing to deliver on any of the promises he had made four years earlier.¹⁰⁷

The worst day of the campaign for Obama occurred on October 2, when the president and his opponent held the first of three debates in Denver. The president did not expend the time he should have in preparing for it. His advisers instructed him not to be combative with Romney, advice which they later regretted. During the debate, in which both candidates claimed their policies would improve the lives of the middle class, they seemed to talk past each other and to ignore the moderator, Jim Lehrer of PBS.¹⁰⁸

On stage, Romney, who regarded the debate as his last chance to save his struggling campaign and had prepared extensively for it, appeared more presidential than the president. He was confident and knowledgeable as he presented himself as the true champion of the middle class. In contrast, the president, who regarded debates disdainfully for their lack of substance, appeared arrogant, pedantic, and detached. He often digressed in answering questions, looked down at his lectern, and fumbled with his notes. The consensus after the debate was that Romney had bested Obama by a considerable margin.¹⁰⁹

In the two remaining debates, the president turned things around for the rest of the campaign. Believing that his reelection was on the line, he prepared meticulously for his second meeting with Romney. He was much more relaxed than in the first debate, much less professorial, quick on his feet, and frequently displaying the big smile and wit for which he had become well known. ¹¹⁰

Near the end of the debate a spectator asked him how he could claim to be defending the country when, on September 11, four Americans, including the ambassador to Libya, Chris Stevens, were killed in Benghazi by rioters who overran the American compound. He said he could only explain the steps he had taken to defend the embassy. Romney then miscalculated, accusing the president of never using the term “terrorist” in describing the attack when, as the president pointed out, he had used the term in the Rose Garden the day after the attack. The Republican candidate also failed to show why he and not Obama should be in charge of the nation. He could not escape the “47 percent” comments he made a month earlier as his opponent pounded his credibility and conservative views, denounced his budget proposals as a “sketchy deal,” and accused him of not telling the truth to the American people.¹¹¹

In the third debate, which was devoted to foreign policy, Romney was out of his depth as he embraced what had become the standard Republican line: accusing Obama of failing to give the military the support they needed to defend the country and calling for an increase of $2 trillion for the Pentagon. When he argued that, ship-for-ship, the “Navy was smaller now than at any time since 1917,” the president reminded him that the navy was no longer the battleship navy of 1917 but a highly sophisticated fleet, including submarines, employing the latest technology and capable of launching highly accurate missiles against targets hundreds of miles away. He also pointed to numerous contradictions Romney seemed to make in talking about his foreign policy and remarked that his opponent appeared “to want to import the foreign policies of the 1980s, just like the social policies of the 1950s and the economic policies of the 1950s.” A poll taken by CBS after the debate had the president winning it by thirty points. ¹¹²

In the last days of the campaign, Romney attempted to portray himself as a moderate and agent of change. His crowds grew in size, convincing him that the polls showing the president holding on to a narrow lead were wrong and that when the votes were counted, he would be the next president of the United States. Even Karl Rove—often regarded at the time as the best strategist in the Republican Party and credited by many with George Bush’s two victories in 2000 and 2004—believed Romney would win.¹¹³

In the last month of the campaign, Obama campaigned round-the-clock, portraying himself as the candidate of change fighting the forces of reaction and status quo. Instead of a president content to live in a self-made bubble, he appeared to be a leader using his last reserves of energy to protect the achievements of his first administration and wanting another term to complete his agenda. Even as he campaigned, a number of developments broke in his favor. Former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and secretary of state during the Bush administration, Colin Powell, announced he was endorsing him for reelection. Another Republican, Governor Chris Christie of New Jersey, commended the president for his quick response to Hurricane Sandy, which ravaged the Northeast during the last week of the campaign.¹¹⁴

When the votes were counted on November 4, the president defeated Romney by a margin of 51 percent to 47.5 percent. He received 65.9 million votes to his Republican opponent’s 60.9 million. He won the electoral college by a landslide, gaining 332 electoral college votes to Romney’s 206. Even Ohio, which Romney regarded as key to his victory, went to Obama.¹¹⁵

The president won because the voters were inclined to give him a second chance and because Romney could never shake the image of a wealthy businessman favoring the wealthy and indifferent to the needs of almost half the nation’s population. His campaign was also outplayed by the smartest strategists in the business, the best organization on the ground, and the most technologically sophisticated campaign in the nation’s history.¹¹⁶

The president’s victory was not as stunning as his election in 2008. Although his margin of victory was about the same as four years earlier, overall voter turnout, especially among Blacks, was down, and he lost two states that he had won in 2008, North Carolina and Indiana. After he was declared the winner by the major television networks, the crowds welcoming his reelection were fewer and smaller. Missing was the confidence that his reelection would bring about the fundamental change he had promised four years earlier.¹¹⁷

The Republicans also held on to the House and nearly recaptured the Senate, meaning that government was now divided as it had never been before in the twenty-first century. Not only was the executive branch controlled by the Democrats and the House controlled by Republicans, the Supreme Court was evenly divided between four liberals and four conservatives. A ninth justice, Arthur Kennedy, generally voted with the conservatives, but in key cases, like upholding the landmark decision Roe versus Wade, or affirming the constitutional right of same-sex couples to marry, he voted with the liberals.¹¹⁸

All that said, Obama was “the comeback president,” just as former President Clinton had been able to term himself as the “comeback kid” after turning his campaign around in 1992. Often written off as a one-term president following his stunning rejection in the 2010 congressional elections, he maintained his coolness. At a rally that followed his victory, he even seemed more animated and happier than he had been four years earlier when he realized the weight of the presidency had just fallen onto his shoulders. Having been in office for four years, he was more confident about his ability to serve another four years, although he continued to be concerned about what he sensed were growing national political divisions and the undermining of any sense of national unity.¹¹⁹

Throughout the two years between his repudiation in 2010 and his reelection in 2012, Obama held steadfastly to his vision of an inclusive middle-class nation predicated on free enterprise, entrepreneurship, and individual responsibility. As president, he sought to achieve that goal by offering opportunities to even the most disadvantaged Americans, whether through tax cuts and credits, or health reform, or increased support for public education. But the burden of achieving success was on individuals willing to make the most of the opportunities before them by their own hard work and initiative. This was the vision he retained and the message he carried into his second term as president.

In foreign policy, Obama’s priority was dealing with the Arab Spring of 2010–2012. In his response in the Middle East, he was guided by two principles: (1) stay out as much as possible; and (2) when intervention was required, international consensus was necessary before the United States would intervene. Even then, the response had to be limited and the US should act only as part of a coalition. As in his domestic policy, he believed in responsibility—individual responsibility at home and national responsibility abroad. He encouraged and assisted nations to succeed, but ultimately the burden of success rested with them. This was true in Egypt, Libya, and Syria. These nations did not succeed as the president hoped. And for that, he opened himself to criticism by those who argued that he should have done more or that he should have done less to assist them. Still this was the message he carried into his second term.