This is 'not a victory for me. It's a victory for the American people,' President Obama said. Obama's lame-duck victory lap

In a rare moment of ebullience, President Barack Obama marked the final day of public events in the first half of his term by signing into law a repeal of the ban on gays in the military, arguably the most symbolic of his legislative victories thus far — one that represents far more than a campaign promise kept to a key constituency.

On display before a packed audience at the signing ceremony was a president who took his party’s massive losses in the midterm elections as a mandate to stake out a position in the ideological middle, yet managed to finish the year ahead of his political opponents.


With the Senate’s decisive vote to ratify the START nuclear arms treaty — despite Republican leaders' repeated attempts to derail it — Obama will leave Washington for Hawaii, and end his first two years as president, with an impressive collection of lame-duck accomplishments. Along with dismantling the "don't ask, don't tell" prohibition on gays and lesbians in uniform — widely viewed as a landmark moment in gay rights history — the list includes a massive bipartisan tax bill that includes an extension of long-term unemployment benefits and confirmation of 19 of Obama’s judicial nominations, some of which GOP senators had sidetracked for months.

On Wednesday afternoon, just after the Senate completed its few remaining items of business, Obama held a year-end press conference, highlighting the “productivity” of the 111th Congress and outlining the work ahead. The appearance is a victory lap of sorts, but the president resisted a reporter’s invitation to call himself “the comeback kid.”

"We took a shellacking, and I take responsibility for that," Obama says, referring to the midterm elections. "But I think what's happened over the last several weeks is not a victory for me. It's a victory for the American people."

It remains to be seen whether the next two years will be nearly as productive, once Republicans take control of the House, sharply increase their power in the Senate and launch their declared plan to undo Obama’s agenda. But the events on Wednesday, which ended with a confident Obama addressing reporters, capped an unexpected reversal of fortune in which the post-election narrative — initially seen as an epic disaster for the White House — dramatically turned in the president's favor.

Hours earlier, at the ceremony at the Department of the Interior, more than 500 onlookers cheered as Obama signed the "don't ask, don’t tell" repeal into law. The president, clearly buoyed by the jubilant mood, said the bill declares that “we are not a nation that says, ‘Don’t ask, don’t tell.’ We are a nation that says, ‘Out of many, we are one.’”

It was the first event in Obama's presidency devoted to the issue, and it fulfills a long-held campaign promise that seemed doomed after the failure of a defense spending bill containing the repeal language in September — and in light of the Democrats’ “shellacking” at the hands of Republicans in November’s midterm elections, significantly weakened his grip on power.

Many questioned how Obama would play his suddenly bad hand, particularly after energized Republicans declared their victory was a repudiation of the president’s agenda. Obama's morning-after call for bipartisanship, made during a downbeat, introspective press conference, did little to end the speculation, and left Democrats fretting about a hamstrung White House.

Yet a lame duck session that many predicted would be stagnant suddenly became active, as the president and the White House decided to deal with the GOP and take advantage of their majority while they still had it.

Weeks after the election, Obama abandoned a campaign promise to let Bush-era upper-income tax cuts expire and brokered a deal with Republicans incomes above $250,000, creating an $857 billion tax-cut compromise. Though Democrats were outraged at a two-year extension of tax breaks for the wealthy, the White House pointed to an extension of unemployment insurance and middle-class tax breaks, which were part of the deal. Some on the left even framed it as a second stimulus package that could help revive the anemic economy.

The deal broke a legislative deadlock, clearing the paths for the repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell,” the judicial confirmations and ratification of the START nuclear arms agreement — all White House priorities.

The president’s decision to work with Republicans is vindicated both by the tally of his legislative achievements during the lame duck session, and by the GOP votes that helped him upend the ban on gays in the military — a major win that helps soothe Democrats agitated by White House compromises with the right.

Speaking at the signing ceremony, Obama said that the sacrifices of gay men and lesbians who served in the armed forces while hiding their sexuality has been obscured in history, but “at every turn, at every crossroads in our paths, we know gay Americans fought just as hard — gave just as much — to protect this nation and the ideals for which it stands.”

And he went out of his way to thank House members and senators in both parties who revived the seemingly dead legislation and “put conviction ahead of politics to get this done together.”

This victory, bipartisan yet largely free of compromise, is a spoonful of sugar for some Democrats who grudgingly swallowed a bitter pill a week earlier: voting with Republicans for the president's tax-cut deal in exchange for GOP votes to extend unemployment insurance for the long-term unemployed.

It was one of several White House-GOP deals Obama made this year that stuck in the craws of some Democrats — a sweeping health care overhaul that lacked a public option, to name just one. Liberal critics also complained loudly about inaction on other priorities, including comprehensive immigration reform and climate change legislation.

Nevertheless, the president previewed his likely remarks in a forthcoming news conference Wednesday afternoon when he praised Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and outgoing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for leading in one of the most “productive” congressional sessions in American history.

That productivity, however, could come to a grinding halt: Republican leaders have made it clear they intend to dismantle Obama’s signature health reform legislation when the next Congress convenes in January. And Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, whose power will increase next month, has publicly declared his goal is to make Obama “a one-term president.”

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs indicated that the president would not address the Republicans’ plan to wage war against the president’s legislative priorities. Gibbs said Obama, in response, would simply challenge them — as he has done throughout the lame-duck session — to set aside politics to do “what is in the national interest.”

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story said Wednesday’s event was the first in his presidency devoted to the issue of gay rights. It was the the first event of his presidency devoted to the repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell.”

CORRECTION: Corrected by: Burgess Everett @ 12/22/2010 05:27 PM CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story said Wednesday’s event was the first in his presidency devoted to the issue of gay rights. It was the the first event of his presidency devoted to the repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell.”