The most powerful office on earth?
Tell that to Barack Obama as he waits this week to learn the fate of his landmark health care legislation, achieved through such fierce effort, meant to be a cornerstone of his legacy, and now utterly out of his hands.
Or as he watches the unfolding debt crisis in Europe, which could capsize the American economy between now and Election Day. He has minimal sway over how European leaders handle it. He has everything to lose if the job is botched.
Each month he braces for new Labor Department jobs numbers, knowing that his actions at this stage can’t influence them much before November and knowing, at the same time, that they could save or doom him.
On most fronts and in many ways, his presidency right now is an exercise in hoping and in holding his breath. He attained the most formidable station in the world only to experience a flimsy degree of control.
He’s hardly the first president to cross into this cruel limbo, where every hiccup in the domestic economy and spasm abroad is a potential death knell — or a mercy.
But how many presidents, at least in recent decades, have known something precisely like the Supreme Court’s possible erasure of the Affordable Care Act? How many have confronted a Congress this wholly paralyzed by partisan rancor and this steadfastly unyielding?
How many have done so after such an accelerated and charmed political prelude, during which they exerted such control over their own narratives?
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