Before last Sunday night, Obama’s “big things” dealt mainly with reviving the sagging economy, investing in technology and infrastructure, and promoting energy independence. His examples of American resilience were anchored mostly in the past, as when he called last December for another “Sputnik moment” in demanding educational innovation.
Now, however, Obama has a new case study in American exceptionalism to invoke. And although White House advisers insist they are not incorporating the bin Laden raid into their political planning for 2012, they acknowledge it has the potential to do more than simply reshape his image as a decisive leader.
“If there’s an enduring impact of this, it will be a sense of what the president said in his State of the Union address,” Obama strategist David Axelrod said.
Like other top Obama advisers, Axelrod was careful not to paint the raid as a personal victory for the president. It “was not a political exercise, so I don’t want to treat it as such,” he said. At the same time, he said, there are “other challenges, and challenges people are facing in their daily lives, and those don’t go away simply because of this,” citing high gas prices and the economy, which could regain center stage as the excitement over the operation dies down.
“But it was a reaffirmation of that American determination and American spirit — the ability to do the things that some people thought impossible,” Axelrod said. “And that has value.”
Already, in several appearances since the raid, Obama has described it as a reminder that “as a nation there is nothing that we can’t do,” as he put it during an unrelated White House ceremony Monday. On Sunday night, during his first comments about the operation, he linked it to American values, saying the country is “once again reminded that America can do whatever we set our mind to.”
His most rousing remarks on bin Laden came Friday, before troops at Fort Campbell, Ky., where Obama not only hailed the bin Laden operation as a great American achievement but also tied it directly to the country’s ongoing economic woes, among other challenges.
“It’s easy to forget sometimes, especially in times of hardship, times of uncertainty — coming out of the worst recession since the Great Depression, we haven’t fully recovered from that, we’ve made enormous sacrifices in two wars — but the essence of America, the values that have defined us for more than 200 years, they don’t just endure,” Obama said, his volume rising.
Loading...
Comments