President Obama on Tuesday assiduously avoided any appearance of declaring the mission in Iraq accomplished, but his second Oval Office address may be remembered as vividly as his predecessor's aircraft carrier speech, albeit for a very different reason: Tuesday was the moment Obama turned toward his own re-election bid.
Obama's address was aimed at claiming credit for a key campaign promise, but it was also an acknowledgment that the hardest part of his presidency -- revitalizing an economy that stubbornly refuses to recover -- lies ahead.
Re-election campaigns are a combination of reminding voters of the promises the candidate made, and kept, the first time he or she ran, and making new promises to be kept during the subsequent term.
That formula, said Democratic strategist Tad Devine, "will certainly be what [Obama and his advisers] want to focus on -- real accomplishment, a relentless focus on the economy, a path towards future economic growth, and later a strong push-off against the opposition."
Sure enough, on Wednesday, a top Organizing for America official e-mailed Obama's legendary multimillion-member contact list under the subject line "A promise kept." And perhaps no promise was more central to Obama's presidency than ending the war in Iraq. Obama had given a speech opposing the war in 2002, before he was a U.S. senator and long before such opposition was popular, even in Democratic circles. By the time he ran for president, most of his fellow Democratic candidates were taking heat for voting to authorize the use of force against Iraq. Former Sen. John Edwards went the furthest, apologizing for his vote seemingly at every turn.
Only then-Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton stuck to her guns, believing a liberal turn in the primaries would hurt her in a general election; instead, it became the key differentiation between Clinton and Obama in the primaries, one in which Obama was on the right side.
"I think putting some punctuation mark on Iraq at this point was important for historic reasons and to remind the American people what we have done and what we are doing in that part of the world," said Mike McCurry, the former White House press secretary. "Americans tend to forget, and you have to remind them."
But the 2012 presidential campaign won't be about the war in Iraq, and it's not likely to be about the war in Afghanistan, either. Instead, voters now say they care about the economy and jobs above all else. With a recession lingering and showing as many signs of a double dip as of outright recovery -- Friday's monthly jobs reports are expected to detail another serious blow to the economy -- that's not likely to change anytime soon.
From the Oval Office, Obama addressed those concerns, calling the economic morass "my central responsibility as president." And along with that focus, Obama interwove a series of issues that could easily double as a re-election platform.
"Our most urgent task is to restore our economy and put the millions of Americans who have lost their jobs back to work," Obama said. "To strengthen our middle class we must give all our children the education they deserve and all our workers the skills that they need to compete in a global economy. We must jumpstart industries that create jobs and end our dependence on foreign oil. We must unleash the innovation that allows new products to roll off our assembly lines and nurture the ideas that spring from our entrepreneurs."
With the national climate trending away from Democrats at a precipitous pace, Obama's options in the midterm elections are limited. He is unpopular enough to be unwelcome in many swing districts, and few candidates are eager to be seen embracing his agenda (some Democrats have even expressed private frustration that Obama is focusing on Iraq at all rather than spending his entire time on the economy). Obama is becoming, in essence, a fundraiser-in-chief; he has raised millions for his party and its candidates while avoiding the sorts of mega-rallies that were his hallmark in 2008.
"The Democrats' prospects in the midterms are looking pretty dim right now. If the massacre pans out, I think even his boosters in the media will stop giving Obama the free pass," said Brad Coker, the independent pollster who runs Mason-Dixon Polling and Research. "He needs to start setting up the bounce-back, which he hopes will come from an eventual economic recovery in late 2011 or early 2012. If it doesn't happen, he's toast anyway, so he might as well start betting the house on the economy."
"They really don't know what the political environment will be post-midterm," McCurry said of the administration. "They can guess and think it will be lousy, and they know that the economy will be front and center."
The Iraq address is hardly the first time the White House has signaled it is looking ahead to 2012. In August, press secretary Robert Gibbs assailed the "professional left," a move some Democrats saw as the initial effort to raise the president above the congressional fray and triangulate against both Washington Democrats and Republicans.
That statement, as well as Gibbs' admission that Democrats could lose the House, stirred anger among the party's congressional leaders. They want the White House talking up the party's significant legislative accomplishments -- health care reform, the stimulus package, credit card reform, financial regulatory reform and other bills -- and drawing contrasts with Republicans.
But Obama's usefulness during the midterm elections is limited by bad poll numbers, confining him to fundraisers and the occasional trip to campaign in friendly territory. Any political moves from a White House that has proven extraordinarily savvy at, and dedicated to, protecting its principal's brand are geared less toward this November and more toward the voting blocs Obama will need when he seeks re-election in 2012.