2013 wasn’t as bad (for the President) as you might think - By E.J. Dionne Jr.

[DonViejo]

It was a heck of a way for President Obama to wrap up 2013. In asking the question at the president’s year-end news conference, Julie Pace of the Associated Press captured several things at once: the reality of a genuinely disappointing year for Obama, a mood of skepticism in the media about him, the inevitability of Beltway scorekeeping and the personalization of nearly everything in politics.

Obama, for good reason, avoided a direct answer. But I’d suggest that 2013 was not his worst year. That distinction should be reserved for 2011, when the president emerged from the summer looking weak after protracted negotiations with House Republicans over a debt-ceiling increase.

Obama was operating from a position of fear. Faced with a GOP buoyed by its 2010 election victories and still intoxicated by insurrectionary tea party spirits, he believed Republicans might well be willing to pull the nation’s financial house down by refusing to raise the debt limit. This forced him to accept the long-term budget cuts in the “sequester” that to this day severely constrain his ability to innovate in policy — and largely lock in place a fiscal policy that holds back the economic recovery.

The year 2013 was better than that. It’s true that the health-care Web site fiasco threatened to engulf Obama’s signature achievement. And Obamacare will undergo new tests in the coming year. The site’s “back end” problems in connecting with insurance companies could create more bad news in January as some who thought they had bought policies discover that their purchases failed to go through.

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/ej-dionne-2013-wasnt-as-bad-as-you-think/2013/12/29/404e7ece-6f11-11e3-aecc-85cb037b7236_story.html?tid=pm_opinions_pop

[Gothmog]

1. I agree

2013 was not that bad of year for President Obama

[Jamaal510]

2. 2010 was clearly Obama's worst year,

as enthusiasm and patience among his base were low, and Democrats got clobbered in Congressional and Gubernatorial elections, thus paving the way for GOP obstruction.

[Proud Liberal Dem]

4. 2009-2010 was the watermark of the "Tea Party"

They were a "new" phenomenon back then and generated a lot of enthusiasm that helped reinvigorate the GOP at at a time that they were ebbing low after the disastrous George W. Bush (P)residency and the election of Barack Obama in 2008. I hesitate to say that the Tea Party has been vanquished but I don't think that they carry the same weight as they did before and even the GOP seems to be slowly backing away from them. Midterm voters will still, however, likely be of the more conservative variety, unfortunately. We need to make sure to counter their enthusiasm with some enthusiasm of our own. Maybe the best we can hope for is a "wash"?

[Proud Liberal Dem]

3. Everything always seems like "the worst" for President Obama

every misstep is magnified and blown out of proportion and every "scandal" is severely hyped and every failure to accomplish something legislatively is laid at his feet while extraordinary GOP congressional obstructionism (which hasn't really been anything new since 2009 but impossible to overcome since 2011) is constantly minimized. However, the "problems" that are plaguing President Obama don't seem so catastrophic and/or damaging as some of the really serious problems that plagued George W. Bush during his "second" term- never ending occupation of Iraq that was sending our military men and women to their deaths every day, botched response to Hurricane Katrina that also caused a loss of human life, and a financial meltdown that claimed the livelihoods of a significant amount of people- among other things. If the worst thing that anybody can say about Obama's Presidency is that the rollout of his signature legislative achievement (ACA) was shaky/problematic, then I would not be too worried. After all, a glitchy website might temporarily inconvenience some people but it isn't going to kill them.