Like any commander in chief, especially one dogged by low approval ratings, President Obama wishes he could have a few do-overs.
Obama said Wednesday that he should have closed the detention facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba on his “first day” in office.
Though Obama frequently blames Republicans for blocking his agenda, there is a host of administrative blunders the president could add to his list of regrets, along with a handful of verbal gaffes conservatives use to mock his policies. Obama might also want to take back his first 2012 debate performance against Republican Mitt Romney — but since he went on to win the election, the president has likely moved on from that disastrous showing.
Given the current state of his presidency, here are five things Obama might like to go back in time and fix:
1) Pass immigration reform while Democrats have control
Obama consistently bemoans the lack of legislation on comprehensive immigration reform as the biggest regret of his presidency.
The president had the benefit of Democratic control of the House and Senate during his first two years in office. The White House, however, used its political capital during 2009 and 2010 on the passage of Obamacare — which continues to be an albatross for both Obama and his fellow Democrats.
With no chance of getting a major rewrite of immigration law through a Republican Congress, Obama turned to executive action in November to protect millions of illegal immigrants from deportation and issue them work permits.
That action has effectively been put on halt by the courts — and could ultimately be decided by the Supreme Court.
Obama certainly enjoyed painting Romney as outside the mainstream on immigration, a task made easier by the lack of legislation. But when Obama looks back on his presidency, he’ll likely wonder whether he should have moved sooner on overhauling the nation’s immigration system.
Though Obama views the Affordable Care Act as the centerpiece of his legacy, it has been a political loser, at least to date.
2) Make sure healthcare.gov works
Speaking of Obamacare, the president still should have nightmares about getting a certain website up and running.
In October 2013, healthcare.gov became a stark symbol of the botched rollout of the president’s signature domestic priority. For weeks, the White House endured a string of embarrassments and Americans were turned away from obtaining insurance coverage.
The president and members of his inner circle were more focused on the message surrounding the biggest overhaul to healthcare since the creation of Medicare in 1965 than ensuring the massive technical undertaking was ready to go.
The glitches were eventually fixed, but the snags came at a time that was critical to shaping public perceptions of Obamacare.
More people still oppose the Affordable Care Act than support it, leaving Obama to insist that his program will be validated by history.
3) Avoid talking about the “JV” team
Obama has been known to use basketball analogies. One of them became more memorable than the rest — and for all the wrong reasons.
“The analogy we use around here sometimes, and I think is accurate, is if a JV team puts on Lakers uniforms, that doesn’t make them Kobe Bryant,” Obama said in reference to the Islamic State in a January 2014 interview with the New Yorker. “I think there is a distinction between the capacity and reach of a bin Laden and a network that is actively planning major terrorist plots against the homeland versus jihadists who are engaged in various local power struggles and disputes, often sectarian.”
A little more than a year later, the Islamic State controls an area of Iraq and Syria about the size of West Virginia, along with “provinces” in Libya, Nigeria, and other countries. Despite months of U.S. air strikes, the terror caliphate has repulsed all efforts to dislodge it and regularly horrifies the world with gruesome videos of beheadings, immolations and other atrocities.
The president now tries to downplay the significance of the comments, but in the interview he was clearly referring to the takeover of Fallujah, which was carried out by the Islamic State.
Since then, the spread of the Islamic State has risen to the top of the list of U.S. national security concerns. It is the varsity team of terrorist organizations, so to speak.
And Obama gave Republicans a ready-made sound bite to paint him as naïve in diagnosing the threat of radical Islamic terrorism.
4) Don’t draw red lines
Obama said very simply that his “red line” for intervention in Syria was if strongman Bashar Assad’s government used chemical weapons against rebel forces there.
When Assad apparently did so, the Obama administration did not enforce the threat.
The so-called red line became symbolic of what critics saw as Obama’s tardiness in responding to global threats. Rather than being deliberate, some allies said Obama was effectively tarnishing U.S. credibility.
The Syrian civil war also provided the crucial boost to the Islamic State, which the president will surely have to confront throughout the rest of his time in office. For the past six months, the Obama administration has been conducting airstrikes in Syria — though Congress has yet to formally grant the president war powers for that campaign.
Obama has been careful not to make a similar type of declaration since those infamous words in August of 2012.
5) Shut down Hillary’s email system
The White House acknowledged earlier this month that Obama exchanged emails with former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, when she relied exclusively on a private email domain and server.
“I assume that he recognized the email address he was emailing back,” White House press secretary Josh Earnest told reporters of the leaders’ digital correspondence.
It does not appear that Obama ever advised Clinton to stop the practice, despite his claim to run the “most transparent administration in history.”
Clinton has yet to put questions about the episode to rest. And even some Democrats wonder why she was never told to use a government email account and allowed to play by a different set of rules.
On a broader level, the emails hurt Clinton because it feeds into the narrative that she’s ultra-secretive. Republicans will use the controversy to stoke doubts about the authenticity of the politician likely tasked with protecting Obama’s legacy.
With a do-over, Obama might have asked, “Hey, what’s “[email protected]?”
