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But Mr. Obama doesn’t intend his message for Republican ears. He’s already concluded there is little to be gained by courting his opponents. That was made evident by his decision to implement a series of executive orders — which allow him to bypass Congress — on the environment, on immigration and, most spectacularly, on a rapprochement with Cuba after more than 50 years of a U.S. embargo. The wave of orders infuriated Republicans, who accuse him of acting outside the Constitution, and showing contempt for the voters who filled Congress with GOP members.

Like he cares. His message is meant for Democrats, and especially those Democrats who felt disappointed and betrayed by an administration that achieved so little after promising so much. U.S. pundits have established a cottage industry in tracking the president’s lengthy list of broken promises, many of them on issues dear to Democrat hearts. On everything from treatment of enemy combatants to establishment of a “global education fund”, Mr. Obama has found it harder to deliver than to promise.

But now that the situation is all but hopeless, he doesn’t have to deliver. So few Americans expect big things from the President that he’s free to return to the days when he could spend his time expounding on ways America could be a better place. In office, Mr. Obama developed a reputation as distant and detached, either unable or unwilling to get along with Congress, and even with members of his own party. Now he can go back to posing as the idealist, filled with suggestions for better ways to do things, if only the rest of Washington would listen. He can devote the next 23 months to proposing populist measures he can’t get approved, perhaps burnishing his legacy and regaining some of the admiration of left-wing supporters he lost during the six years he’s spent in the Oval Office. If he’s lucky, historians may look back with admiration at his revised agenda, ignoring the fact he threw himself into it only when there was no longer a political penalty to be paid.

It also allows him to try and set the parameters of the debate for the 2016 election, establishing an agenda he was unable to fulfill himself but would like to establish for his successor. He is proclaiming, in essence: “Here are all the things I didn’t do while in office, but which the next president should.” Whether the Democratic candidate appreciates the effort is an open question. But, again, it’s one Mr. Obama won’t have to worry about.

National Post

KellyMcParland