If US President Barack Obama is feeling the pain from a rough year at the office, he did a great job of covering it up on Friday.
Before boarding Air Force One for a vacation in Hawaii, the president gave a year-end news conference with a spring in his step, buoyed by a surge in US economic growth and newly confident after having stymied his Republican critics with unilateral actions on immigration and Cuba.
Bantering with reporters, granting questions only to women and wishing all the Hawaiian Christmas greeting, “Mele Kalikimaka,” Obama appeared energised and exuded an I’m-not-done-yet attitude.
“There is no doubt that we can enter into the new year with renewed confidence that America’s making significant strides where it counts,” he said.
The Washington Post declared recently that Obama had “the worst year in Washington,” a grim assessment after the president struggled to respond to a variety of foreign and domestic crises from beheadings by Islamic State to Russia’s aggression against Ukraine to racial unrest in Ferguson, Missouri.
He was quickly labeled a lame duck after his Democrats’ dramatic mid-term election losses to resurgent Republicans in early November. Already a multitude of potential candidates are jockeying for position in the looming fight to succeed him in 2016.
Obama’s actions in the weeks since the elections, however, have foiled the conventional wisdom that his presidency is largely over.
He bypassed a divided Congress to reform immigration on his own, ignored congressional critics this week by moving to normalise relations with Cold War-era foe Cuba, and reached a compromise deal with Republicans on a $1.1 trillion spending bill to the chagrin of some Democrats.
Perhaps the biggest factor in Obama’s improved mood has been stronger economic growth and job creation after the long tepid period that marked much of a presidency that began in early 2009 when the economy was mired in deep recession.
It is an old truth of American politics that presidents have a greater ability to strike compromises and go against their party’s orthodoxy in their last two years in office, when they don’t have to face the voters again.
