U.S., Russia agree to sharp cut in nuclear arms Play Video AP – U.S., Russia agree to sharp cut in nuclear arms
WASHINGTON (AFP) – Two big wins for Barack Obama at home and abroad -- a historic health care bill and a new arms treaty with Russia -- have injected sudden momentum into a presidency that had been looking beleaguered.
"What a week here," White House press secretary Robert Gibbs wrote on his twitter feed, as Obama concluded a new strategic arms reduction treaty in a call with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev on Friday.
In six days, two of the biggest projects of Obama's presidency came to fruition after months of painstaking work, transforming the image of an administration that had swung hard but failed to connect on big agenda items.
By Friday, Obama could savor the spectacle of the pundits he frequently decries, switching from a "this presidency is over" mantra, to hailing him as a conquering domestic president and a global statesmen.
The lofty expectations of a transformative presidency, which shackled Obama when he took office amid the deepest economic crisis in generations, look a little less hubristic, after his best week in the White House.
The president has already framed a narrative that he is a leader, who has delivered the change he promised, and will stick with tough issues to the end.
"It took patience. It took perseverance. But we never gave up," Obama said Friday, referring to tortuous negotiations with Russia, striking a tone he also used to describe his hard fought health care victory.
So will this renewed presidential swagger help Obama capture the momentum in a volatile election year and lead to progress on tricky foreign policy problems?
The White House noted several times this week that foreign leaders congratulated Obama on his health care triumph, suggesting his standing is bolstered on the global stage.
The image of a successful presidency is important, analysts said, and may enhance Obama's leverage on difficult issues like Iran's nuclear program, non proliferation and the Middle East.
"When a president is doing badly in the US, there is less reason to fear him abroad," said Julian Zelizer, a political historian at Princeton University.
As he piloted health care through the fractious Congress and concluded arms negotiations with Russia this week, Obama was also in the middle of a rare, and public test of wills with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
That image of an engaged president mastering Washington politics while navigating a treacherous world may also change some minds about Obama's tenacity.
"There was a fear for many Democrats and some Republicans that, particularly in foreign policy, this was a president that was a great talker, thinker and campaigner but was not someone that is particularly tough," said Zelizer.
But while Obama may have enhanced his statesman's credentials, it seems unlikely his personality alone can shift the policy of US foes and allies, in a world where actions are dictated by shrewd calculations of national interest.
Presidential prestige by itself is unlikely to convince China to revalue its currency, or Iran to halt its nuclear program, or ease the conflict in the Middle East, or convince North Korea to quit its belligerence.
And the lofty idea that Obama's hope-fueled politics, huge popularity, exotic biography, later enhanced by a Nobel Peace Prize, could resolve the world's most testing conflicts had already proven fanciful.
Statesmanship is also no guarantee of domestic success at home -- just ask ex-president George H.W. Bush, turfed out of office in an economic downturn after engineering a soft landing for the Cold War and evicting Iraq from Kuwait.
A toxic political climate at home could prove limiting for Obama: his bitterly-won health care victory deepened the polarization of US politics, making prospects for future legislative successes uncertain.
His political fate, like those of his recent predecessors, may depend on the pace of economic growth and job creation, with unemployment at 9.7 percent.
Economic misery and its impact on Obama's popularity -- currently below 50 percent in most polls -- will also drive mid-term congressional elections in November, in which Democrats fear big losses.
And perilous issues loom -- like the delayed closure of trials for terror suspects at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and the struggle to enact financial reform -- that could also dim the president's new political luster.
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