by Jules Witcover

It's obviously much too early for President Obama to claim victory over the Republican congressional and other party leaders in their concerted effort to make him a one-term president. But he is already aggressively moving to capitalize on his success in achieving sweeping health care reform.

Even as he is taking to the campaign trial to convince the American people that Obamacare is not a threat to their very way of life as the tea-partiers insist, he is chalking up progress on other fronts.

Before enactment of the health-care legislation, he had already pried a modest jobs-creation bill from Congress. And on its heels he has struck a major arms control deal with Russia that can bring significant mutual reductions in nuclear weaponry by the once-bitter Cold War rivals.

The deal, part of Obama's declared mission to punch the "reset button" on U.S.-Russian relations after the erosions of the Bush presidency, should provide impetus to the global nonproliferation effort, marred principally now by Iranian nuclear ambitions.

Obama is also pivoting to a more focused attack on American joblessness and home forceclosures, and to the intricate task of financial reform and regulation of the banking and investment world. In the latter, the Republicans may find it awkward to be credibly opposed, given their long reputation as the party of Wall Street.

Amid all this, Obama found time last weekend to squeeze in a quick visit to Afghanistan, to buck up the U.S. armed forces there and also to remind Afghan President Hamid Karzai that the Obama administration expects more action from him on dealing with the widespread corruption he has so far seemingly ignored.

Rather than excessively gloating over his health-care victory, the president has gone into a fast-break mode on a variety of fronts, energized by that come-from-behind legislative success that has left the Republicans on the defensive. Their post-vote concentration on repealing the bill they thought they had buried only weeks ago has only reinforced their obstructionist image.

Even that once notorious cross-party maverick, Sen. John McCain, now facing a serious tea-party challenge in his Arizona GOP re-election primary challenge, is counseling fellow Republicans to dig in and oppose Obama on a range of political fronts.

In this effort, McCain called on his 2008 presidential campaign running mate Sarah Palin the other day to rally the faithful in his favor. She responded with a blistering anti-Obama, anti-Democratic attack that cast her as the star of the pep rally and the aging senator as a grateful sidekick.

Other Republican leaders like GOP National Chairman Michael Steele continue to proclaim the approaching November congressional elections as the first big step toward making Obama virtually a lame-duck president two years before his anticipated bid for reelection in 2012. Republican control of Congress, they project, will finish him off.

But Obama is already seizing the offensive with his energetic and broad attack on problems he pledged to address in 2008 before being confronted by the economic mess and continued military tasks left to him by the failed Bush presidency.

Many Democratic liberals remain disappointed with the first Obama year and with his yielding to political pragmatism in the health-care fight and on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. But as a group they swallowed hard on health care and the two wars and most see a successful Obama as their own best ticket to reelection in November and beyond.

Through it all, Obama's own optimistic and cheerful demeanor has been both a tonic to his most activist followers and very likely an irritant to all those who can't wait to send him packing. In any event, the latest CNN poll has his job approval rating at 51 percent, a three-point increase since his health-care victory.

The charm and affability of Barack Obama have never been in question, but his toughness was often doubted in a first year of political trial and accommodation. His actions of the last weeks have clearly shown his willingness to play hardball on health-care reform and to press on through adversity to encounter other major challenges before him. The speculation of only weeks ago of a one-term Obama presidency has suddenly been quieted.

 

Available at Amazon.com:

Supreme Power: Franklin Roosevelt vs. the Supreme Court

The Political Fix: Changing the Game of American Democracy, from the Grassroots to the White House

 

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Obama on the Rebound | Jules Witcover - Politics Today

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