WASHINGTON — President Obama has been chafing for months at the notion that he’s a lame-duck president. That’s one reason he took the offensive in the run-up to the State of the Union address. His aides insist that Obama plays his best in the fourth quarter of the game, and they want him to finish strong, from an opening with Iran to closing Guantanamo.
Obama owns foreign policy for another two years. And the Middle East, which has haunted every State of the Union address for as long as I can remember, presents new opportunities for either breakthrough diplomacy or disastrous conflict. How Obama handles the Iranian nuclear issue, in particular, may define his presidency.
But the political lens is already beginning to shift from Obama to the three politicians who, according to the polls, people would most like to see run in 2016: Republicans Mitt Romney and Jeb Bush, and Democrat Hillary Clinton. A CBS poll this week reported that 59 percent of Republicans think Romney should run and 50 percent want Bush. Among Democrats, an amazing 85 percent want Clinton in the race.
What’s interesting about the 2016 race is that the Republican and Democratic candidates are all positioned to run against Obama’s foreign policies. Partly that’s an inevitable reaction after a two-term presidency: No candidate wants to promise more of the same. But it’s more than that. The critiques of Obama are already sharply etched, and they’ll overhang the political landscape for the next two years.
Romney’s best argument on foreign policy is that he was right about the resurgence of al-Qaeda and other Muslim extremist groups. In the Oct. 22, 2012, debate, Obama made breezy comments about how al-Qaeda’s core leadership had been “decimated,” but a somber Romney had it exactly right: “It’s really not on the run. It’s certainly not hiding.”