Politics
Election 2012: Bypassing Congress – the new Obama approach
U.S. President Barack Obama (l) and Republican presidential candidate., Mitt Romney
There’s not much President Barack Obama can do to boost the economy in the next five months, and that alone might cost him the November election. But on a range of social issues, Obama is bypassing Congress and aggressively using his executive powers to make it easier for gays to marry, women to obtain birth control, and, now, young illegal immigrants to avoid deportation.
It’s a political gamble that might fire up conservatives, many of whom remain cool to Republican candidate Mitt Romney. Democrats think it’s more likely to inspire enthusiasm among groups that were crucial to Obama’s 2008 victory, young voters, women and Hispanics.
In relatively good times, a first-term president’s wide array of powers can force his challenger to shift from issue to issue, hoping to find a gap in the incumbent’s armor. This year, that scenario is practically turned on its head.
Romney is the play-it-safe candidate, rarely straying from his jobs-and-economy talking points and sharply limiting encounters with national reporters. Romney took six hours Friday to offer a short and carefully worded comment that criticized Obama’s new immigration policy for not providing “a long-term solution.”
Romney didn’t say whether he would overturn it if elected. But by noting “it can be reversed by subsequent presidents,” he might have sown doubts in the minds of some young illegal immigrants studying the policy.
President Obama looks like the bigger risk-taker. He doesn’t have many options.
He is constrained by a complex, interrelated and frail global economy, and by a Republican-run House. Together, they severely limit his ability to influence the struggling U.S. economy, which Obama says needs more investments in education, renewable energy sources and other areas.
