New York Times White House reporter Julie Hirschfeld Davis is sending Barack Obama into 2016 in style, with three successive stories focusing on various flattering angles of the president, who is shedding the lame duck stereotype and laying down accomplishments -- at least according to Davis -- although the poor president can’t enjoy a holiday getaway without world events intruding. (That’s a common theme in the paper, which favors portraying the president as a passive victim of world events).
In July 2014 Davis slobbered over Obama the intellectual, engaging in "Freewheeling events, with conversations about architecture, art and literature." This Monday, she penned “Relishing a Respite in Hawaii, but Reality Is Never Far Away,” which portrayed as a burden the president’s visit with families of the victims of the San Bernardino attacks.
As President Obama left Washington for his annual year-end beach getaway with his family here, he had one last duty to attend to.
En route to his native Hawaii for Christmas vacation, Mr. Obama stopped in San Bernardino, Calif., for what was originally billed as an hourlong visit with families of the victims of the mass shooting this month. But it stretched late into the night on Friday, as the president and his wife, Michelle, spent nearly three hours in a high school library, privately grieving with loved ones of each of the 14 people slain.
It was a grim note on which to start Mr. Obama’s two-week vacation with his wife and two daughters, Malia, 17, and Sasha, 14. But presidential vacations are always an exercise in balancing the spirit of a family break and the serious work of crisis management that never stops entirely, and sometimes intrudes completely, for the commander in chief.
That is particularly true this time, as Mr. Obama wraps up a year in which he has accomplished a long list of ambitious agenda items but still faces a public deeply worried about terrorism, and has the sagging approval ratings to prove it.
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If the president was in the mood for a victory lap -- and a radio address Saturday in which he recited a David Letterman-style top 10 list of his achievements suggested he was -- he was also reflecting on the darker side of the year that is drawing to a close.
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As eager as Mr. Obama was to promote his accomplishments at the end of the year, he also appeared in a hurry to escape the spotlight for a brief time....
In a story posted online later Monday, a report based solely on an Obama interview from liberal National Public Radio, Davis let Obama whine uninterrupted about Donald Trump, using the Republican candidate as an excuse to accuse the part of only opposing his policies because he is black.
He also described his view of the anxiety on which Mr. Trump has capitalized, arguing that some voters who voice fears about his presidency and doubts about where Mr. Obama’s loyalties lie are reacting to the fact that he is the first black president.
“If you are referring to specific strains in the Republican Party that suggest that somehow I’m different, I’m Muslim, I’m disloyal to the country, etc. -- which unfortunately is pretty far out there, and gets some traction in certain pockets of the Republican Party, and that have been articulated by some of their elected officials -- what I’d say there is that that’s probably pretty specific to me, and who I am and my background,” Mr. Obama told Steve Inskeep, the host of “Morning Edition” on NPR. “In some ways, I may represent change that worries them.”
“That’s not to suggest that everybody who objects to my policies may not have perfectly good reasons for it,” the president added. He noted, as an example, that voters living in coal-dependent areas may blame him for the loss of their jobs.
The media also came in for their share of blame from Obama.
He also suggested that heavy coverage of the media-savvy extremist group by news outlets chasing viewership had contributed to the public anxiety that has dragged down his approval ratings on the issue.
On Sunday, Davis co-wrote with Michael Shear a similar story about Obama’s major accomplishments in 2015 being unfortunately buried under terror fears. It appeared under the rather condescending headline, “As Obama Checks Off List of Goals Met, a Nervous Nation Dwells on Terror.” As if the terror threat is an irrational thing for nervous citizens to “dwell” upon.
Determined to defy the stereotype of a weakened short-timer, President Obama is ending 2015 with a series of accomplishments, most notably a nuclear agreement with Iran, an international climate accord, a 12-nation Pacific trade pact, and long-stalled deals on the budget, education and transportation.
But as he begins his final year in office, those achievements have been overshadowed by Americans’ anxiety over terror attacks and the expanding battle with the Islamic State, along with a public perception that Mr. Obama is unable or unwilling to channel the nation’s fears.
Mr. Obama has the lowest rating of his presidency for terrorism, with 37 percent approving of the way he has handled the issue, according to a national survey by the Pew Research Center. Fifty-seven percent disapprove, even as terrorism has catapulted to the top of the public’s list of concerns.
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Mr. Obama, in private meetings a year ago, vowed to wring every ounce of progress out of his remaining tenure and admonished his staff not to be discouraged by Republican congressional victories. His success in the past 12 months, both overseas and at home, defied expectations that gridlock in Washington and the presidential campaign would derail his plans.
Yet Davis lamented:
But few seem to have noticed. The president’s overall job rating has hardly budged in the last year, the Pew survey found. The president’s job approval is at 46 percent even as Mr. Obama has claimed progress on economic and domestic issues, which the public now rates as less important.
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The president and his aides have long been frustrated by a political and media environment that they view as too focused on trivial, short-term matters. One senior White House official said Mr. Obama and his aides had reached “the acceptance phase,” recognizing that even significant accomplishments were unlikely to break through. But White House officials said the president remained focused on chipping away at his priority list in the next year.
Mr. Daley said the president had “a hard time emoting” about the terror threat because he tried to avoid the kind of bellicose rhetoric coming from the Republican presidential candidates.
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At the same time, he said, Mr. Obama has been unable to shake the perception that his response to national security threats has been weak. The share of Americans who believe the government is doing a good job reducing the threat of terrorism has fallen sharply this year, from 72 percent to 46 percent, the lowest point since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
“He gets bipartisan criticism on terrorism, including among conservative and moderate Democrats,” Mr. Doherty said. “This is now Topic A for Americans, and this critique that he’s not tough enough has persisted and grown.”
Shear and Davis concluded with pro-Obama positives:
Senator Lamar Alexander, Republican of Tennessee, said the approach had been central to the bargaining that yielded the first education policy rewrite in more than a decade, a law known as the Every Student Succeeds Act. Mr. Obama called the bipartisan cooperation a “Christmas miracle” when he signed the act into law this month.
Mr. Alexander recalled that the president had invited him to travel aboard Air Force One to Knoxville, Tenn., in February for an event on education policy, and while on the trip, the senator asked Mr. Obama not to threaten to veto the education rewrite as it was taking shape.
“He was good to his word,” Mr. Alexander said.
