See, "A More Worried Obama Battles to Win Second Term":
When President Barack Obama emerged from his car in Charlottesville, Va., to address a crowd of 7,000 mostly college kids Wednesday afternoon, he asked longtime friend Valerie Jarrett: "Why am I having a short day?"I love that quote from Mitch McConnnell. And on the president's social graces, the White House admits "The One's" an asshole and snob who couldn't care less about building coalitions, even if it takes work and compromise.
Mr. Obama was unhappy there weren't more events for him to make his case for re-election. "There should be no short days," he said.
As Mr. Obama heads to the Democratic National Convention next week, the biggest change from his campaign four years ago is reflected in that complaint. The president is having to work more relentlessly to stay in the White House than he did to get there in the first place, and he knows it.
Mr. Obama arrives in Charlotte, N.C., with polls tightening and the economy far from recovery. When he accepts his party's nomination Thursday, Americans will see a charismatic figure much as they did four years ago, and one who, polls say, is more well-liked personally than is his GOP foe, Mitt Romney.
They will also see a more worried politician, who publicly insists he will win his re-election while privately he concedes he knows he could lose. His job-approval ratings have struggled to cross the magic 50% line. Advisers say he is keenly aware of the tough environment.
"He knows it's his last election," says Ms. Jarrett, who is one of his senior advisers. "He won't look back and think he could have done more."
Mitch McConnell, the Senate Republican leader, says the president faces a tougher election because of a shortage of bipartisan achievements, arguing Mr. Obama backed away from big potential budget and tax deals with Republicans. "He was deeply disappointing," Mr. McConnell said in an interview. "He was not the adult you would expect in the White House.…The president's campaign slogan is, 'It's not my fault.'"
Over his first term, Mr. Obama, 51 years old, has fundamentally shifted his view of modern presidential power, say those who know him well. He is now convinced the most essential part of his job, given politically divided Washington, is rallying public opinion to his side.
As a result, if he wins a second term, Mr. Obama plans to remain in campaign mode. "Barack is grayer, but he's wiser from the battles," says Charles Ogletree, a friend and one of Mr. Obama's professors at Harvard. "This time Barack will use the bully pulpit."
The White House declined a request to interview Mr. Obama.
The president views a second term in some ways as a second chance, an opportunity to approach the office differently, according to close aides. He would like to tackle issues such as climate change, immigration, education and filibuster reform.
He has told some aides that a sizable mistake at the start of his administration was his naiveté in thinking he could work with Republicans on weighty issues. "He's not cynical, because he still gets disappointed," one adviser says. "But he won't make that mistake again."
Still, even some people close to the president acknowledge he missed bridge-building opportunities, given his personal style and aversion to the traditional political niceties that can nurture relationships in D.C. circles.
Here's more from WSJ:
The president's team is concerned about the lack of enthusiasm, particularly among young voters and Hispanics—both central to Mr. Obama's strategy. Mr. Obama is trying to energize the Democratic base with tough talk about Mr. Romney and the GOP. He recently launched an effort to rally college students in battleground states.The poor boy.
On Wednesday in Charlottesville, after addressing the crowd, mostly students from the University of Virginia, he went online to Reddit.com, a website popular among young people and the tech cognoscenti, and participated in an "Ask Me Anything" question-and-answer session.
"This is a different Barack Obama at this stage," one senior adviser says. "Last time, he thought Hillary Clinton had been his toughest opponent and that the heavy lifting was behind going into the general election." This time, he "understands that—whether Mitt Romney is the greatest candidate or not—the dynamics in this country make victory a harder prospect."
Mr. Obama arrived at the White House in January 2009 with strong Democratic majorities in the House and Senate and a cache of political capital based on his promise to be a consensus-builder. He netted several big legislative achievements, including an economic-stimulus package and overhauls of financial regulations and health care.
But once in the White House, Mr. Obama struggled to find bipartisan consensus on the tough economic issues he inherited, and strained to maintain the connection he established with voters in 2008. He has had his share of legislative and national-security successes but also a host of battles and losses. In his passage of health-care overhaul, victory came after protracted, messy fights that went all the way to the Supreme Court, and closed-door dealings that hurt his standing with voters.
Republicans leveled the field in the 2010 midterm elections by taking a majority in the House and narrowing Democrats' majority in the Senate. It was clear Mr. Obama had lost some of his connection with voters.
By January 2011 Mr. Obama's advisers were holding focus groups twice a week, a former senior White House official said, and test-driving phrases and policies aimed at resonating with key voting groups.
Mr. Obama is particularly bothered that Republicans and some business leaders have painted him as antibusiness. He argues privately that he hasn't gotten proper appreciation for his work in pulling businesses, particularly the financial sector, out of the recession's ditch. "They say I don't get it, but I'm the one who saved it," Mr. Obama complained to a close ally after the 2010 midterm vote.
John Engler of the Business Roundtable, and former GOP governor of Michigan, said Mr. Obama's efforts to help business have been offset by some policies that have been harmful, citing parts of the Dodd-Frank financial regulatory overhaul. He said senior administration officials have made substantial efforts to reach out to business in recent years, including a call to him this week about issues like export control. But, he said, "There's been some disconnect on the follow-through."
To underscore their contention that Mr. Obama doesn't understand the private sector, Republicans have seized on a remark the president made in July, "If you've got a business, you didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen." Obama aides say the line has been taken out of context, as it was made after a reference to government investment in infrastructure such as roads and bridges.
O's upset that people "misunderstood" his anti-business comment "You didn't build that" --- as if that's the first time he's ever dissed business owners and entrepreneurs. He personally pledged to crush the coal industry and he long ago attacked everyday Americans as bitter clingers.
F-k him.
After failing to achieve a sweeping bipartisan debt deal that summer—and then, watching as a smaller compromise struggled through the Republican House—Mr. Obama's new view of his campaign and presidency emerged, aides say: He decided to focus largely on re-election. David Axelrod, a longtime adviser, recalled Mr. Obama phoning him to say, "From here on out, I have to take my case to the American people."What total buttfreak asshole.
In a sense, Mr. Obama is doubling down on his well-documented distaste for socializing with lawmakers and nurturing personal relationships with Washington insiders. Allies and foes alike say this tendency may have made his road tougher because he never established a rapport with Republican leaders.
Mr. Obama, for instance, rarely opens up his golf foursome to anyone outside his close friends and aides, and hasn't hosted members of Congress at Camp David. Both are tools that previous presidents used to mix business and pleasure. Mr. Obama, in contrast, prefers to spend social time with family and close friends.
His aides say that socializing with Republicans would have made no difference anyway, given their intent on unseating him. During his first year, Mr. Obama held occasional Wednesday-night receptions for members of Congress. "But he stopped those niceties because they didn't make a difference when Republicans' only goal was defeating him," an adviser says.
And don't miss the Los Angeles Times, "Obama faces deep division":
CHARLOTTE, N.C. — It was the promise that first brought Barack Obama to national attention, and the one that his presidency has most conspicuously been unable to fulfill — the hope of national unity.Yeah, ain't that rich, coming from the Blamer-in-Chief.
"There's not a liberal America and a conservative America; there's the United States of America," Obama, then a candidate for the U.S. Senate and relatively unknown outside Illinois, declared in his keynote speech to the Democratic convention in 2004.
That speech — and the image it created of a political leader with potential to reach across partisan bounds — formed the springboard that helped Obama make the improbable leap from freshman senator to the Oval Office just four years later. Against the backdrop of deep partisan division during George W. Bush's presidency, many voters saw a potential healer in the young, biracial candidate who had spent limited time as a member of the deeply unpopular Washington political elite.
Today, as he prepares to accept his party's nomination for a second term, 3 1/2 years in office have ground away much of that nonpartisan aura, leaving behind a deeply polarized view of the nation's 44th president.
Many Republicans denounce Obama as a "socialist." They express fears that he seeks to radically transform the country. Polls repeatedly have shown Republican voters expressing pessimism about the country's future and worrying that the U.S. has been set on a path toward decline.
At the same time, despite complaints from the left about issues as diverse as the war in Afghanistan, which he has pursued, and efforts to cap greenhouse gases, which he has not, Obama has retained strong support within his own party.
As measured by Gallup, his job approval during most of his tenure among members of his own party has surpassed that of any Democratic president since John F. Kennedy.
The partisan gap in views of Obama is among the largest in modern history, only exceeded — and then just barely — by the division over Bush.
Republicans have sought to exploit a shift in Obama's public image. His rival, Mitt Romney, seldom lets a speech go by without criticizing Obama as a "divider."
Ironically, however, if Obama wins a second term, a shift toward greater partisanship that began a year ago may well prove the single most important reason why — the key to his recovery from near-collapse last summer.
Obama portrays his failure to bridge the partisan gap as among his biggest frustrations in office.
"I haven't been able to change the atmosphere here in Washington to reflect the decency and common sense of ordinary people — Democrats, Republicans and independents — who I think just want to see their leadership solve problems," he said earlier this summer in an interview with CBS correspondent Charlie Rose. "And, you know, there's enough blame to go around for that.
"I think there is no doubt that I underestimated the degree to which in this town politics trumps problem-solving," Obama added.
What a dick.
The election is tighter than a witch's nipple, despite all the talk about how Obama leads in the swing states, blah, blah.
More on that here: "Ohio Is Ultimate Battleground State."
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