Obama’s lofty inaugural ideals run into reality

Pres­i­dent Barack Obama arrives on the West Front of the Capi­tol in Wash­ing­ton Mon­day for his cer­e­mo­nial swearing-in cer­e­mony dur­ing the 57th Pres­i­den­tial Inau­gu­ra­tion. (Asso­ci­ated Press | Win McNamee)

JULIE PACE

AP White House Correspondent

WASHINGTON — Pres­i­dent Barack Obama’s lofty ideals from his inau­gural address ran smack into real­ity Tues­day on the first work­ing day of his sec­ond term.

Twenty-four hours after Obama pledged to tackle cli­mate change and called for gays and les­bians to be treated equally under the law, the White House strug­gled to back up his sweep­ing rhetoric with specifics, rais­ing ques­tions about how much polit­i­cal mus­cle he’ll put behind both issues.

Repub­li­cans were already sig­nal­ing their unhap­pi­ness with Obama’s agenda.

“The era of lib­er­al­ism is back,” said Sen­ate Repub­li­can leader Mitch McConnell. “If the pres­i­dent pur­sues that kind of agenda, obvi­ously it’s not designed to bring us together.”

Obama, stand­ing before hun­dreds of thou­sands of peo­ple on the National Mall, had vowed to “respond to the threat of cli­mate change, know­ing that the fail­ure to do so would betray our chil­dren and future generations.”

But in the White House brief­ing room a day later, Obama spokesman Jay Car­ney said he couldn’t spec­u­late about future actions. He said that while cli­mate change was a pri­or­ity for the pres­i­dent, “it is not a sin­gu­lar priority.”

On gay rights, the pres­i­dent had declared that the nation’s jour­ney is “not com­plete until our gay broth­ers and sis­ters are treated like any­one else under the law, for if we are truly cre­ated equal, then surely the love we com­mit to one another must be equal as well.”

But Car­ney said the pres­i­dent was speak­ing about his per­sonal views and would not take fed­eral action on same-sex mar­riage, which he con­tin­ues to see as a state issue.

Even with his last elec­tion behind him, Obama has pol­i­tics to weigh as he con­sid­ers just how much effort he’ll put into pur­su­ing cli­mate change leg­is­la­tion and a gay rights agenda. Both issues are backed by the president’s lib­eral base but opposed by many Repub­li­cans and con­ser­v­a­tive Democrats.

Obama already is ask­ing law­mak­ers for a lot as he starts his sec­ond term. He needs their votes to increase the nation’s bor­row­ing limit and approve bil­lions of dol­lars to keep the gov­ern­ment run­ning. And he has pledged to pur­sue stricter gun leg­is­la­tion and com­pre­hen­sive immi­gra­tion reform quickly this year, nei­ther of which can pass Con­gress with­out some GOP votes.

For envi­ron­men­tal groups and gay rights sup­port­ers, Obama’s inau­gural address pro­vided fresh hope for progress on issues that were stum­bling blocks for Obama in his first term.

While the Con­gress passed leg­is­la­tion backed by Obama to reduce car­bon emis­sions from vehi­cles, his efforts to pass a cap-and-trade bill failed on Capi­tol Hill due to bipar­ti­san oppo­si­tion. And despite Obama’s many actions to bol­ster gay rights in his first term — includ­ing repeal­ing the military’s ban on openly gay ser­vice mem­bers — his reluc­tance to back gay mar­riage frus­trated many of his lib­eral sup­port­ers until he ulti­mately voiced his sup­port for same-sex unions last year.

Sup­port­ers of both issues say Obama will quickly have oppor­tu­ni­ties to demon­strate his com­mit­ment to their causes in his sec­ond term.

The Supreme Court will soon take up Propo­si­tion 8, a California’s ban on same-sex mar­riage, a case that could give the jus­tices the chance to rule on whether gay Amer­i­cans have the same con­sti­tu­tional right to marry as heterosexuals.

Oppo­nents of the ban have called on the Obama admin­is­tra­tion to file an ami­cus, or friend-of-the-court, brief to over­turn the measure.

“We view the president’s fil­ing of an ami­cus brief in this case as the next nat­ural step to his inau­gural remarks,” said Fred Sainz, vice pres­i­dent of the Human Rights Cam­paign, the nation’s largest gay rights groups. “His call for equal jus­tice under the law for gay and les­bian Amer­i­cans includ­ing in their com­mit­ted rela­tion­ships is the cen­ter­piece of the argu­ment against Propo­si­tion 8.”

The White House has so far refused to take a posi­tion on the Supreme Court case.

For envi­ron­men­tal groups, Obama’s next best chance to make good on his inau­gural address is a loom­ing deci­sion on the Key­stone XL pipeline run­ning from Canada to the Gulf Coast.

Obama blocked the pipeline last year, cit­ing uncer­tainty over the project’s route through envi­ron­men­tally sen­si­tive land in Nebraska. But on Tues­day, the state’s Repub­li­can gov­er­nor, Dave Heine­man, gave his approval to a revised route for the pipeline, a widely antic­i­pated move that nonethe­less added to the polit­i­cal pres­sure for the Obama admin­is­tra­tion to approve or reject the new route with­out delay.

“If we are going to get seri­ous about cli­mate change, open­ing the spigot to a pipeline that will export up to 830,000 bar­rels of the dirt­i­est oil on the planet to for­eign mar­kets stands as a bad idea,” said Anthony Swift of the Nat­ural Resources Defense Council.

Repub­li­cans and many busi­ness groups say the pipeline project would help achieve energy independence.

The State Depart­ment, which has fed­eral juris­dic­tion over the $7 bil­lion pipeline because it begins in Canada, said Tues­day that it would not be able to con­clude its review dur­ing the first quar­ter of the year.

White House offi­cials sought to look beyond Key­stone, with aides say­ing Tues­day that the pres­i­dent may also pur­sue exec­u­tive actions to ful­fill his pledge to tackle cli­mate change.

Posted by AP News on Jan 22 2013. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.