The coming weeks offer Obama a chance to shift the direction of his presidency. Obama's summer slump

President Barack Obama has just ended a summer shadowed by weakness: A convergence of external events and what even some Democrats are calling self-inflicted setbacks have cast a harsh light on a so-far anemic second term.

He is now beginning an autumn in which conflicts that have festered sullenly for years — in Syria and on Capitol Hill — are poised for climactic resolution.


The next several weeks offer a chance for Obama to shift the direction of a presidency in which he has been slowly bleeding both personal popularity and, more importantly, the intangible mystique of power — one that flows from a president’s ability to let domestic and foreign rivals alike know they will either bend to his will or pay a severe penalty.

Interviews over the holiday weekend found surprise — and, among sympathetic Democrats, widespread dismay — at how Obama has handled some recent episodes. These Democrats, many of whom spoke on background to avoid a public confrontation with their own leader, included members of Congress and several people who have either worked for Obama or consulted closely with his West Wing.

( PHOTOS: Obama’s second term)

In the fifth year of his presidency, some of these observers say, he is making choices that are reminiscent of the missteps some predecessors have made during their awkward early months in power:

• Through public statements and private leaks, Obama and his subordinates have opened an unusually wide window into the president’s internal deliberations.

In Washington and around the world, both friends and foes can easily read his doubts about his own Syria policy and witness his agonizing over the use of military force in real time. His decision over the Labor Day weekend to seek congressional approval for a limited military strike on Syria came after administration officials earlier signaled that reprisals for use of chemical weapons by President Bashar Assad’s regime were imminent, perhaps just hours away. On Capitol Hill, the delay is being interpreted in both parties, not as evidence of a principled belief in constitutional authority, but as Obama’s attempt to share ownership if his Syria decisions go awry.

( Also on POLITICO: New Senate Syria plan limits Obama)

• He has conveyed that important decisions are open for public pressure and bargaining.

The most vivid example is the ongoing debate over who Obama should select to replace Ben Bernanke as chairman of the Federal Reserve. Unlike in Syria, in which the timing of difficult decisions is largely outside Obama’s control, this involves a decision that has been on Obama’s calendar for months. Yet Obama allowed an internal debate to become an external one — inviting his own fellow Democrats to choose up sides in a kind of shirts-versus-skins competition between backers of Larry Summers (a favorite of many West Wing insiders) and Janet Yellen (a favorite of many liberals who believe Summers is temperamentally ill-suited and too close to Wall Street.)

• He has diluted the power of his own words.

Most recently, the attention has been on Syria. Obama declared two years ago that Assad must leave power, a goal that turned out to be impervious to U.S. policy. A year ago, he declared that use or movement of chemical weapons was “a red line” — an improvised phrase, aides said — and even now it remains unclear how severe the penalty will be for the regime’s deadly nerve-gas attacks last month against Syrians.

( WATCH: Obama seeks Congress authorization on Syria)

The deflated power of Obama rhetoric, however, has a domestic equivalent. Earlier this year, Obama began a high-profile public campaign to warn about the damaging effects of a budget sequester, and to make congressional Republicans pay a price for refusing to negotiate a deal to end it. Instead, the campaign petered out and the sequester remains intact.

A senior veteran of Bill Clinton’s presidency warned, “When the president is on television screens and no one stops to listen — that’s when you worry.”

“After the election, the hope had been that the Republicans would be willing to work with him on a range of issues, but clearly it really hasn’t changed their calculus,” said a senior House Democrat who sympathizes with Obama. “He got very little momentum coming out of the election.”

( PHOTOS: Syria: Where politicians stand)

This comment underscores the fundamental challenge of Obama’s second term so far. At the beginning of the year, his aim was either to force Republicans to let go of obstructionist tactics and strike a deal with him on budget issues and immigration reform — or to turn intransigence against them and set Democrats up to regain the House in 2014.

So far, Republicans haven’t been pushed to the negotiating table — and even most Democratic strategists say it still looks unlikely their party will be able to evict the GOP from House control 14 months from now.

For the moment, Obama is not in strong position to help that cause. His job approval rating has been trending downward all year, and most major public polls found him in the red in August, including an NBC News rating of 44 percent that was a tie for his lowest-ever among NBC/Wall Street Journal surveys.

( Also on POLITICO: Behind the scenes of Obama's decision)

White House officials say the first eight months of Obama’s second term have been more successful than commonly perceived in Washington. Even before his second inauguration, he came out of a budget stand-off with Republicans that achieved his long-time goal of raising upper-income tax rates while keeping rates on the middle-class steady. He managed to break an impasse over nominations by winning approval for his appointments to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, and has also taken executive actions to help fight greenhouse gases and make college more affordable.

Congressional Democrats also credit second-term White House chief of staff Denis McDonough with better diplomatic skills than predecessors.

“Over the course of the last eight months, the president and senior members of his team have done more to reach out to Congress and engage them,” said Deputy Press Secretary Josh Earnest. “That’s paid dividends already, including the strong bipartisan support for an immigration bill in the Senate.”

The hope, which White House officials acknowledge is far from a certainty, is that Senate action will create momentum for passage of comprehensive immigration legislation — that bill is currently stalled in the House. In addition, the federal government will shut down if a deal to extend operations isn’t reached before Oct. 1. Shortly after that, the nation will hit its statutory debt ceiling — which gives Congress the choice of raising the limit or sending the nation into default.

In each case, the White House has taken a hard line because administration officials feel that they are winning the public argument. Obama has mocked the set of Republicans who have threatened to shut down the government to stop the implementation of his health care law — a strategy that GOP leaders have disavowed. He’s said he won’t negotiate over the debt ceiling.

White House aides also rejected suggestions that Obama has allowed himself to be bullied on Fed chair deliberations.

He recently came to the public defense of Summers, whom he said was being treated unfairly in the media. “I felt the same way when people were attacking Susan Rice before she was nominated for anything,” Obama said.

But in some ways that comparison made the point. Obama, despite what seemed his clear preferences, backed down from appointing Rice to be secretary of state. He gave the job to John Kerry and tapped Rice for national security adviser, which requires no Senate confirmation. In this case, it’s mostly Democrats, not Republicans, who are taking aim at Summers.

Cumulatively, Obama aides say, the coming fall confrontations will make complaints about the president’s second term doldrums this summer seem irrelevant.

“We don’t look at things in eight-month increments, that’s not the scorecard,” said a senior White House official. “But even if it was, we are doing fine.”

But these officials acknowledge the obvious: the Syria episode will dominate the early fall in ways that no one can predict. The president’s calculation is that — while congressional authorization of a military strike is not necessary — his position as commander in chief is stronger with it, especially since the Syria confrontation may be prelude to a much more consequential showdown with Iran later in his term.

Some congressional Democrats regard this strategy as wishful thinking. It is just as likely, they say, that Obama will lose his request for authorization, or win it with more strings attached than he wants. In any event, if he takes military action and things don’t go well, he will own the results no matter what happens in Congress.

“This Syria situation, this could be the biggest miscalculation of his presidency,” the senior House Democrat said Sunday, noting that Obama hadn’t gotten the typical bounce from his re-election. “Not only is his credibility on the line, but the country’s credibility is on the line. So, he is rolling the dice by taking this to Congress.”

Another senior Democrat said Obama will lose big or win big on Syria.

“If he loses the vote, then clearly he’s weakened,” that lawmaker said. “If he wins the vote, he is significantly strengthened.”

Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) said it’s too important a call to get into the politics of the equation — and, for the record, she likes his deliberative style.

“I haven’t gone into a grading system. I think there’s a serious question facing the United States and to do kind of a winner-loser approach politically would really be inadvisable,” she said. “I think there’s some truth to the proposition that the president tries to figure out what he’s doing before he does it, and that’s a breath of fresh air.”

Richard Haass, the head of the Council on Foreign Relations, was less impressed. He said on Twitter that Obama’s move asking Congress for authority to act “sets a bad precedent and raises doubt about U.S. will/ability to act.”

Long-time presidential observer David Gergen, who has worked for both Republican and Democratic presidents, said Obama risks turning an asset — the openness of his mind — into a vulnerability.

“It is often true with leaders that their strengths become their weaknesses,” said Gergen, a former adviser to presidents who now teaches at Harvard’s Kennedy School.

“Americans generally welcomed Obama’s more deliberative nature,” at the start of his presidency, Gergen said. “Now it’s starting to come across as vacillation and indecision and hesitation. And I think that’s undermined some of his authority.”

Obama isn’t likely to adjust his style anytime soon, said presidential historian Douglas Brinkley, who has been a regular visitor to the White House.

“He’s prudent, and sometimes people want to see a kind of more rough-and-tumble style,” Brinkley said. “I gave that up about five years ago, thinking that’s how he was going to be. This is a president that deliberates.”

Elizabeth Titus and Reid J. Epstein contributed to this report.