As we ‘turn the page,’ Obama looks to close book on his legacy

In the six years of his presidency, Barack Obama has weathered the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, mass-casualty shootings, instability in the Middle East, a government shutdown spurred by a debt ceiling crisis and a months-long battle to reform the nation’s health care system. Now, with two years left in the Oval Office, he says he intends to do more than react to one crisis after another.

Whether he has the time, support and political will to force his agenda through a hostile Congress remains to be seen, but on Tuesday night, at least, he appeared optimistic that he can and will.

“Tonight, we turn the page,” he said near the beginning of his State of the Union address. The military’s combat mission in Afghanistan is officially over. Unemployment is at a six-year low. And now, with his time running out, the president has a shot at implementing a wide-ranging policy agenda that will shape the next chapter in American history.

The centerpiece of that agenda is his plan to ameliorate spiraling economic inequality, the issue that he once described as the “defining challenge of our time.”

“It’s now up to us to choose who we want to be over the next 15 years and for decades to come,” he said. “Will we accept an economy where only a few of us do spectacularly well? Or will we commit ourselves to an economy that generates rising incomes and chances for everyone who makes the effort?"

Achieving the latter, said Obama, means investing in significant upgrades to the country’s decaying infrastructure. It means expanding the number of workers who receive paid sick leave, paid maternity leave and overtime pay. It means making sure that Americans can attend community college free of charge and revising the tax code to make it more progressive.

While these parts of the president’s economic agenda seem calibrated to please his Democratic base, that’s not universally true of the rest of his plan. Obama appeared to defend two pending free-trade deals opposed by much of the country's left wing. Without mentioning them by name, the president alluded to the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, both of which have alarmed progressives who say the agreements will stymie labor regulation and cost American jobs.

Speaking to those critics, Obama conceded that “past trade deals haven’t always lived up to the hype” but insisted that “95 percent of the world’s customers live outside our borders, and we can’t close ourselves off from those opportunities.”

Labor unions were quick to reject that line of reasoning.

“The Trans-Pacific Partnership has much more to do with protecting the investment of multinational corporations and maneuvering around China than lowering trade barriers,” said the Communications Workers of America in a statement responding to the State of the Union.

Yet trade may be where Obama’s interests most overlap with those of Congress. In the official Republican rebuttal to the State of the Union, Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, exhorted America to “tear down trade barriers in places like Europe and the Pacific.”

But many of the president’s other proposals will receive a different welcome on Capitol Hill. Tuesday’s speech was Obama’s first major address since Republicans retook control of the Senate, giving the opposition party a comfortable majority in both chambers of Congress. Although members of the Republican leadership have hinted they might be willing to find common ground with the White House, it remains to be seen whether Obama will be able to achieve any of his priorities through the legislature.

But not all of his favored policies require congressional approval. Over the past year, he has gradually become more assertive in his unilateral use of executive authority to achieve policy goals. After the failure of comprehensive immigration reform on the Hill, he signed an executive action to shield millions of undocumented immigrants from being deported. His administration has also tightened labor regulations for federal contractors and proposed new restrictions on power plant emissions.

Obama is likely to continue using his executive authority when he can and when Congress is unlikely to cooperate. Speaking of climate change, he suggested he will continue to wield the power of his office in an aggressive fashion. “I will not let this Congress endanger the health of our children by turning back the clock on our efforts,” he said. But he did not propose any further action or ask Congress to take action on its own.

In the realm where the president wields the most unilateral power — foreign policy — Obama offered Congress a chance to participate but emphasized that he would do what he has been doing for years. Global counterterrorism efforts will continue as they have, he said. So will the airstrikes against Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), the negotiations with Iran over the country’s nuclear program and the normalization of relations with Cuba.

“I believe in a smarter kind of American leadership,” he said. “We lead best when we combine military power with strong diplomacy, when we leverage our power with coalition building, when we don’t let our fears blind us to the opportunities that this new century presents.”

That optimism carried through to the end of his address, when Obama reiterated a common theme in his public speeches: his belief in a unified American family that can resolve its differences through civil debate.

“I want future generations to know that we are a people who see our differences as a great gift, that we are a people who value the dignity and worth of every citizen,” he said.

One word hung in the air during that final passage: Ferguson, the St. Louis suburb where massive protests took place in 2014 after the shooting of an unarmed black man by a white police officer. Referring to the events that took place in Ferguson and the subsequent killing of another unarmed black man in New York by a police officer, Obama urged Democrats and Republicans to come together and “start rebuilding trust.”

“I still believe that we are one people,” he said. “I still believe that together, we can do great things, even when the odds are long.”

For whatever great things he would like to do, he has two years left.