Obama feels liberated, aides say, and sees the recent flurry of aggressive executive action and deal-making as a pivot for him to spend the last two years being more of the president he always wanted to be.
As of Wednesday, that includes doing what 50-plus years of predecessors couldn’t do in relations with Cuba, propelling a generational shift in American foreign policy that could bring down the last pillar of the Cold War. The Cuba announcement follows a post-Election Day sprint that included sealing a landmark climate agreement with China, shielding five million undocumented immigrants from deportation and reaching a deal that funds most of the government for nearly a year while protecting Obamacare and other top priorities.
The midterms are done, and Obama feels like he doesn’t have to worry about being the driving factor in any other Democrat’s election. He’s spent a year nudging Americans to judge him less on legislative accomplishments and more on his executive actions. And now he’s got a fully Republican Congress that he can alternate between butting up against and making deals with — but really not thinking about much at all.
“We were trapped in this debate of: ‘Is Obama helping or hurting?,’ ‘Was it a mistake to say his policies were on the ballot, or was it the right thing to do?’” a senior Obama aide said this week as the final details of American Alan Gross’s release from a Cuban prison — enabling the deal with the island country — were being worked out. “We are more the masters of our own destiny than we were before.”
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