Rather than sit back and accept his fate as a lame duck officeholder, President Obama has instead been issuing new policy objectives almost weekly, and is taking every chance he can to beat up the GOP presidential field and ensure the 2016 debate includes his priorities.
Starting in July with a trip to Wisconsin just after winning trade promotion authority, and right up until his visit to Iowa on Monday to talk about his new education plans, Obama has simultaneously boasted of his latest policy victory, and trashed the GOP field for failing to support them.
The White House on Monday downplayed the political significance of using a Des Moines high school as the backdrop for his town hall meeting on education. But on the flight to the first caucus state, spokesman Josh Earnest made no bones that Obama is trying to interject himself into the presidential race.
“[T]he president would really like to see a robust debate in the context of the 2016 campaign about what we can do to strengthen our economy and open up college education to more middle-class students,” Earnest said. “And it would be good for the country for there to be a robust debate among the candidates on this issue.”
“We would welcome a variety of candidates putting forward a variety of ideas about what we can do to make college more affordable and to put a college education within reach of more students,” he added.
Aside from pure policy, though, Obama can’t help but pile it on against the GOP. Many of his speeches start with a joke about how there are so many Republican candidates that he can’t keep track.
“Right now, I’m going to try and stay out of the campaign season; partly because I can’t keep track of all the candidates,” Obama joked Monday before blasting Republicans who “bash” teachers.
That was similar to his joke in LaCrosse back on July 2 when he said to Republicans, “You all have enough for an actual ‘Hunger Games.'” He called the Republicans an “interesting bunch,” before ripping into Gov. Scott Walker’s actions regarding unions in his home state and blasting the rest of his would-be Republican successors for advocating “trickle-down economics.”
Whether he’s pitching his trade agenda or overtime rules or education initiatives, Obama veers into what sounds like a stump speech about how he and Democrats support the middle class, while Republicans do not.
“Republicans in Washington are trying to rebrand themselves as the party of the middle class,” Obama said during a Labor Day address in Boston. I’m glad they’re doing it, really. I’d love to work with them on stuff. But you can’t just talk the talk. You got to walk the walk.”
Obama never mentions the Republican candidates by name, and his spokesmen steadfastly refused to comment on the latest swipe billionaire Donald Trump or Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas or anyone else takes at Obama, instead leaving the Republicans who want his job to have to react to him.
In the Boston Labor Day speech where he was touting his executive order regarding paid sick leave for federal contractors, Obama took them to task for being anti-union.
“Take a look at some of the folks who want to be their standard-bearer in the next election,” he said. “I won’t say their names, but you can kind of attach the quote to their names,” he said before recounting Walker’s now-infamous CPAC quote back in the winter when he said eliminating teachers’ and state workers’ collective bargaining rights prepared him to take on the Islamic State.
“I didn’t make that up,” Obama said without naming Walker. “That’s what he said.”
“You had one who blamed unions for the women’s pay gap,” he said, alluding to former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina. “Think about that. So if there were no unions, then suddenly women are all going to be paid equal? And then there was the guy, these guys are running for office, they’re running for the presidency, who said a union deserves a punch in the face,” he said, referring to New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s comment about the American Federation of Teachers.
Obama’s own punches against the GOP seem to be working, as they’re forcing Republican candidates to address his policy priorities.
As Obama arrived in Iowa to talk up the Education Department’s new college scorecard that helps students evaluate schools based on factors such as graduates’ earnings and debt, Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., had an op-ed in the Des Moines Register focusing on his education proposals.
In a press release announcing Rubio’s plan for overhauling higher education, his office noted that it came “as President Obama visits Des Moines today to discuss the growing costs of higher education in America.”
Without having to actually mount a campaign himself, and without committing to a Democratic candidate yet, Obama has appeared more relaxed. On Monday, he even joked about who could possibly want the job he’s held for more than six years.
“I know you guys are all about to be flooded with ads and calls from a bunch of folks who want this job,” he said. “I just can’t imagine what kind of person would put themselves through something like this,” he said.
