President Obama is increasingly being forced to defend his foreign policy from Democratic attacks, including from key Democrats in Congress and even from inside his administration, which one observer says is the latest sign Obama is headed toward lame-duck status.
Obama’s struggle against his own party continued this week, when he lost a major battle in Congress thanks in large part to Democrats. Congress, with overwhelming bipartisan backing, sent Obama the first veto override of his presidency on a measure giving 9/11 victims and their families the right to sue the Saudi government over its alleged ties to the Sept. 11 attacks.
In the weeks leading up to the vote, the White House did its best to convince its Democratic allies on Capitol Hill to oppose it. But the measure had the direct backing of Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., the incoming Senate Democratic leader, and other prominent Democrats who wanted to do something to help 9/11 families and ended up bucking the White House’s warnings.
In the wake of the vote, the White House’s chief spokesman Josh Earnest lashed out at lawmakers, comparing them to kindergartners who “feigned ignorance” of the vote’s impact, and arguing that it was one of the most embarrassing congressional actions in years.
But the high-profile veto override was just one of several major clashes Obama had with his own party. Before the 9/11 vote, the White House had to work hard behind the scenes to prevent a vote on bipartisan legislation imposing sanctions against the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad for war crimes against civilians.
The White House reportedly had to lean on House Democrats to withdraw their support.
Then, just days later, the White House’s National Security Council formally ordered Pentagon leaders to stop referring to the military “competition” between the U.S. and China, according to a Navy Times report citing the NSC directive.
The NSC was taking issue with a statement Defense Secretary Ash Carter made in February citing “the return to a great power of competition” in the Asia-Pacific, “where China is rising.”
Chief of Naval Operations Adm. John Richardson also recently characterized China and Russia as rivals in this “great power competition” in his maritime strategy.
And this week, the White House was hard at work trying to delay a statement from top Democrats criticizing Russia’s efforts to meddle in the presidential election by hacking into computers, according to a report in Buzzfeed, citing congressional sources.
Buzzfeed reported on Tuesday that the White House asked Rep. Adam Schiff and Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the top Democrats on the House and Senate Intelligence Committees, to delay the release of their statement on Russian hacking. The story said the White House was acting out of concern that the statement would amount to a high-level U.S. confirmation that Moscow is to blame for the hacking, which the White House has so far been reluctant to do.
Richard Benedetto, a former White House correspondent for USA Today who covered four presidents and now teaches journalism at American University, chalks up the White House’s sensitivity to the loss of control presidents often feel as they slip into the final months of their presidency and their power begins slipping away.
“In the case of the Obama White House, they are in slow-haul legacy mode,” he told the Washington Examiner. “They are very, very concerned about their legacy and as keen as they are in manipulating and controlling the media scene, they are working overtime to make sure there is nothing coming up” that will mar how Democrats perceive the presidency when the history books are written.
China and Russia have figured prominently in the presidential election and Donald Trump’s campaign, so the White House is particularly concerned about messaging on these two fronts, he said.
The president clearly believes that “electing Donald Trump would be an insult to his legacy, so the White House doesn’t want anything to go wrong in the final weeks before the election and they are trying to show a contrast between the president and Trump,” Benedetto said. The White House is also carefully defending its efforts to tamp down Democratic dissent and shape the message on Russia, Syria and China.
On the NSC directive to the Pentagon on U.S. military “competition” with China, a senior administration official wouldn’t comment specifically on the directive.
“We’re not going to speak to internal discussions,” the official told the Washington Examiner. “But we would make the point that portraying the relationship as one of only competition overlooks the cooperative elements of the relationship.”
“From climate change, to global health, and the Iran deal, we have forged a constructive relationship with China in several key areas,” he said. “You’ll note that [the Department of Defense] in its statement to the Navy Times also spoke of cooperative elements, which is why we have opted not to portray a multifaceted relationship as uni-dimensional.”
On whether or not the White House tried to micro-manage or delay the Schiff-Feinstein statement, the administration was equally elusive.
“The White House was aware of the statement,” an administration official told the Examiner. “The White House did not engage with Senator Feinstein or Rep. Schiff on the content of their statement.”
When asked whether the White House asked the two lawmakers to delay their response, the White House did not respond.
