WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama shook off the grim resignation that had become a hallmark of his recent appearances during his traditional end-of-year news conference Friday, replacing it with the upbeat, easy confidence that helped propel him into office.
He spoke in Hawaiian, joked about the prospect of an inside-the-Beltway publication’s foray into European politics and chose to call only on female reporters during the 52-minute exchange. Explaining his good mood despite the battering his party suffered in the midterm elections, the president turned, inevitably, to a sports metaphor.
“My presidency is entering the fourth quarter,” he said, seeming more relaxed than he has in months. “Interesting stuff happens in the fourth quarter. And I’m looking forward to it.”
That sort of optimism had receded from the public stage in recent months, as the president tackled a succession of crises ranging from the spread of Ebola to the gains of Islamist militants in Iraq and Syria. But several unexpected wins in recent weeks have helped change his “Year of Action” proclamation from a punch line into something closer to a promise kept.
Obama suddenly is celebrating on a number of fronts. The list of accomplishments includes a series of foreign policy successes and several bold domestic initiatives such as his move to block the deportation of roughly 4 million undocumented immigrants, a new climate deal with China and the overhaul of the United States’ relationship with a historic enemy, Cuba, in a single day.
At the start of the news conference, Obama rattled off a string of positive indicators, including the strongest U.S. job growth since the 1990s, an expansion in health care coverage for millions of Americans and the fact that more U.S. troops would be spending this year’s holidays with their families than at any point in the past decade.
And he made it clear later that even if he was not getting credit in the media, he managed to resolve several of the thorniest issues the nation faced this year.
“Ebola is a real crisis. You get a mistake in the first case because it’s not something that’s been seen before. We fix it,” he said. “You have some unaccompanied children who spike at a border. And it may not get fixed in the timeframe of the news cycle, but it gets fixed.”
It was sharp contrast with his news conference almost exactly one year before, when he came under fire for the rocky rollout of the federal health insurance marketplace — “We screwed it up,” he conceded — and dismissed his sagging poll numbers. (“I mean, if I was interested in polling, I wouldn’t have run for president.”)
Now, he said, “I’m energized.” And he outlined the ways he could envision working with congressional Republicans — on tax reform, trade and infrastructure — and areas in which he would plunge ahead on his own, including climate change and health care.
The day after Democrats lost control of the Senate and their hold on several governorships, Obama said he intended to “squeeze every last little bit of opportunity” he could out of his final two years in office. He spoke privately with staff that same day about how he is “a competitive person” who still intends to secure several policy wins despite the electoral reversals his party has suffered.
In the past five weeks, he has shown both his allies and opponents exactly how that can be done.
“Clearly he’s upbeat on the direction that we’re heading in the country,” said Rep. Chris Van Hollen, D-Maryland, who spoke by phone with Obama about the new Cuba policy and the release of the congressman’s constituent Alan Gross, who had spent five years in a Cuban prison.
And Rep. Tom Cole, R-Oklahoma, observed the president showed he could compromise with Republicans when he “swallowed some things he didn’t like” in the $1.1 trillion spending bill he signed this week, putting both parties on notice that he would use a variety of means to press ahead. “This is a message both to them,” Cole said of Democrats, “and aimed at us.”
For months, Obama has tried to walk a delicate line between articulating his principles and not alienating swing voters in conservative states who would help determine the fate of several moderate Democrats. That calculation is now irrelevant, and Obama seemed to be reveling in the new freedom. He has expounded of the dangers of climate change and explained why he’s open to cutting deals some members of his party won’t like.
For example, he openly questioned the economic benefit s of the Keystone XL pipeline, which would transport oil from Canada to the U.S. Gulf Coast, saying, “There’s been this tendency to really hype this thing as some magic formula to what ails the U.S. economy.”
And even as Obama said he would be willing to work with the GOP to address pressing needs such as strengthening the United States’ infrastructure and simplifying its tax code, he dismissed the idea that he would enjoy greater legislative success if he stopped acting unilaterally.
“I’ve never been persuaded by this argument that if it weren’t for the executive actions, they would have been more productive,” he said. “There’s no evidence of that.”
But mostly, the president had fun as he bantered with journalists during his last news conference of the year. He teased McClatchy’s Lesley Clark for trying to cram in multiple questions on Cuba as soon as he called on her — “Do I have to write all these down?” Obama inquired — and congratulated Politico’s Carrie Budoff Brown on her upcoming move to Brussels.
“I think there’s no doubt that what Belgium needs is a version of Politico,” he deadpanned, prompting peals of laughter from the packed briefing room. “Yeah. The waffles are delicious there, by the way.”
Obama decried the cyberattack launched against Sony Pictures by suspected North Korean hackers in retaliation for their film “The Interview,” but the president could not resist poking fun at North Koreans.
“I think it says something interesting about North Korea that they decided to have the state mount an all-out assault on a movie studio because of a satirical movie starring Seth Rogen and James [Franco],” he said, as reporters laughed. “I love Seth and I love James, but the notion that that was a threat to them I think gives you some sense of the kind of regime we’re talking about here.”