With little chance of getting what he wants from Congress this year, President Obama plans to use his final State of the Union address Tuesday to try to set the agenda for his successor, insisting that if he can’t win now, he will demand that voters keep it in mind as they select the next president.
Republican presidential hopefuls are likely to be thrilled with the move, which allows them to draw stark contrasts with Mr. Obama, whose approval rating remains low among the American electorate.
Democratic candidates have to try to draw distinctions between themselves and their president without angering the party’s liberal base.
“The candidates cannot agree wholesale with the president because it paints too clear a target on their back,” said Brandon Rottinghaus, a political science professor at the University of Houston who specializes in presidential leadership. “So they need to be very cautious about picking their disagreements. They have to pick their spots for disagreement very carefully. The president is still popular among Democrats, so they can’t afford to distance themselves too much from the president.”
Seven years into his tenure, Mr. Obama has hit a brick wall in Congress, where voters have installed Republican majorities in both the House and Senate. Republican leaders say Mr. Obama has made no effort to work with them.
Instead, Mr. Obama’s agenda has been stymied on Capitol Hill. He has retaliated by acting on his own, announcing major environmental, immigration and gun policies that he said he tried but failed to get through Congress.
Most of those moves are being challenged in the courts, meaning much of the staying power of Mr. Obama’s actions will depend on judges’ rulings over the next few years, even assuming a Democrat succeeds him in the White House.
With so much of his agenda out of his hands and little else to negotiate with Congress, the White House says the president will cast his eye firmly on the election in November.
“He wanted to step back and take a look at the future of this country, the challenges we’re going through,” Denis McDonough, White House chief of staff, told ABC’s “This Week” program Sunday, “and, most importantly, I think, in this election year, making sure that we have everybody able to take part in our democracy, not the select few, because he knows — and this is what he’ll talk about on Tuesday night thematically — the United States succeeds when we draw on all 350 million Americans that we have in this country, wherever they come from, whatever walk of life they are, whatever party they are.”
In a preview video released last week, Mr. Obama told supporters that the speech “will be for you.” He said he wanted to set the country’s path for “the years to come — the big things that will guarantee an even stronger, better, more prosperous America for our kids.”
Those supporters still have plenty of requests for Mr. Obama’s final year in office. Among others, they want him to flex executive power to impose new campaign finance restrictions, to expand his deportation amnesty and to close the terrorist detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Any of those moves, however, could spark a new row with Congress, and Mr. Obama will need Capitol Hill’s help if he is to check off the final legacy-building items on his list, including criminal justice reform and approval of the massive free trade deal known as the Trans-Pacific Partnership.
Hispanic Democrats in Congress will have to decide whether to give Mr. Obama a warm reception or not. They are furious that his Homeland Security Department has begun a series of raids to round up and deport illegal immigrant mothers and children from Central America who have been ordered deported but who are refusing to leave.
The numbers are small — far less than 1 percent of those who surged across the border in 2014 and 2015 — and the administration says it’s abiding by the law in conducting the deportations. But immigrant rights advocates say the women and children are refugees who could face death if they are sent back to their home countries.
All three major Democratic presidential candidates have expressed concerns over the raids.
All three of the Democratic candidates are likely to bristle at Mr. Obama’s expected defense of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which faces widespread antipathy within their party.
Given how much of his legacy lies in his executive actions, and with the entire Republican presidential field vowing to reverse all of his moves, Mr. Obama has more incentive than most previous presidents to turn over the keys of the White House to someone in his own party.
Analysts said they expect the president to use his speech to lay out those stakes as the election approaches.
“There’s going to be a summary of highlights of his record. What we’ve tried to do — what the administration has tried to do — in important areas, and why it’s essential for Democrats to continue after this administration. That’s a gesture to those seeking the nomination, like Hillary,” said Bruce Buchanan, a political science professor at the University of Texas at Austin who tracks presidential elections.
But he will need to be careful which issues he picks, said Mr. Rottinghaus. If Mr. Obama spends too much time battling issues where public sentiment is with the Republicans, he said, it could be a problem for the Democratic candidates.
Mr. Obama “can box them into certain positions that might be unpopular in the public,” Mr. Rottinghaus said. “He can beat the political dead horse on issues they can’t win on and, in doing so, kind of create this perception that Democrats are failing when it comes to certain kinds of issues.”
The president’s efforts to combat the Islamic State group and his plans to close the Guantanamo Bay detention facility could be just the kinds of subjects Democrats might wish he would set aside and that Republicans will want to hear more about.
Speaking to “Fox News Sunday” this weekend, Mr. McDonough said Mr. Obama will try to make good on his vow to shut down the prison and will submit a plan to Congress laying out how to do it — though the chief of staff repeatedly ducked questions about whether the president would then claim executive authority and act unilaterally if Congress doesn’t agree with him.
“He feels an obligation to the next president. He will fix this so that they don’t have to be confronted with the same set of challenges,” Mr. McDonough said.
• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.
• Ben Wolfgang can be reached at bwolfgang@washingtontimes.com.
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