Barack Obama

Aides say many more such moves are coming. Not just a short-term shift in governing style and a re-election strategy, Mr. Obama’s increasingly assertive use of executive action could foreshadow pitched battles over the separation of powers in his second term, should he win and Republicans consolidate their power in Congress.

The sharpest legal criticism came in January 2012, after Mr. Obama bypassed the Senate confirmation process to install four officials using his recess appointment powers, even though House Republicans had been forcing the Senate to hold “pro forma” sessions through its winter break to block such appointments.

Mr. Obama declared the sessions a sham, saying the Senate was really in the midst of a lengthy recess. His appointments are facing a legal challenge.

Mr. Obama’s new approach puts him in the company of his recent predecessors. Mr. Bush, for example, failed to persuade Congress to pass a bill allowing religiously affiliated groups to receive taxpayer grants — and then issued an executive order making the change.

A ‘To-Do’ List For Lawmakers

With a polarized Congress already on the defensive, in May 2012, Mr. Obama outlined a five-point “to do” list for lawmakers that packaged job creation and mortgage relief ideas he had proposed before. He presented the election-year list during a visit to a university science complex in Albany.

The components of his challenge to Congress — and to the Republican-led House in particular — are expected to be a feature of his campaign appearances. For example, while in Reno, Nev., during a trip West to raise campaign money, Mr. Obama plans to push one of the proposals, to allow more families who are current on their mortgages to refinance at lower interest rates. Nevada, a swing state critical to his re-election, is among the places hit hardest by the housing bust.

The president’s pitch aims to underscore the obstructions he has faced from Republicans, and at a time when critics across the political spectrum are assailing a “do-nothing Congress.” But Mr. Obama is at some risk of seeming impotent in the face of his opposition, and House Republicans complain that their own ideas have languished in the Democratic-controlled Senate.

Several of the proposals Mr. Obama is demanding are business tax cuts. One would provide a 20 percent tax credit for companies that move overseas operations back to the United States; the revenue cost would be offset by eliminating deductions for companies’ costs of relocating business abroad.

A proposed 10 percent income tax credit would go to small businesses that add employees or increase wages, and Mr. Obama would extend through 2012 a measure allowing businesses to write off the full cost of investments in equipment. Also on the president’s list is his call to extend a energy production tax credit and to expand a credit for advanced clean-energy manufacturing.

A final proposal would create a Veterans Jobs Corps to help place veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan as police officers and firefighters or in other community-service jobs.

Declaring Support for Gay Marriage

President Obama declared for the first time on May 9, 2012 that he supports same-sex marriage, putting the moral power of his presidency behind a social issue that continues to divide the country.

“At a certain point,” Mr. Obama said in an interview in the Cabinet Room at the White House with ABC’s Robin Roberts, “I’ve just concluded that for me personally, it is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same-sex couples should be able to get married.”

The comments end years of public equivocating over the divisive social issue for the president, who has previously said he opposed gay marriage but repeatedly said he was “evolving” on the issue because of contact with friends and others who are gay.

Mr. Obama’s remarks — becoming the first sitting president to support extending the rights and status of marriage to gay couples — came after long-standing pressure from gay rights activists who are among his most loyal constituents but have been frustrated by his refusal to weigh in on the issue.

But the decision to risk the potential political damage in an election year appears to have been driven by the unexpected declarations of support for gay marriage by his vice president and several cabinet members.

His remarks came after Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. said on May 6 that he is “absolutely comfortable” with the idea of gay Americans marrying each other. Arne Duncan, the secretary education, said a day later that he flatly supports gay marriage.

In the interview, Mr. Obama spoke about how his views about same-sex marriage have changed over the years, in part because of prodding from friends who are gay.

“I had hesitated on gay marriage in part because I thought that civil unions would be sufficient,” Mr. Obama said. “I was sensitive to the fact that for a lot of people, the word marriage was something that invokes very powerful traditions and religious beliefs.”

But he added that “I’ve always been adamant that gay and lesbian Americans should be treated fairly and equally.”

Mr. Obama’s change of heart puts him at even sharper odds with his presumptive Republican rival, Mitt Romney, who opposes same-sex marriage and favors an amendment to the United States Constitution to forbid it.

2012 State of the Union Address

In January 2012, Mr. Obama used his election-year State of the Union address to argue that it is government’s role to promote a prosperous and equitable society, drawing a stark contrast between the parties in a time of deep economic uncertainty.

Mr. Obama asserted that government should work to better balance the scale between the rich and the rest of America — changing the tax code and other policies if Congress would go along, and making the most of his executive powers if Congress would not. People earning more than a million dollars a year should pay an effective tax rate of at least 30 percent and should not receive tax deductions for housing, health care, retirement and child care, he declared.

“We can either settle for a country where a shrinking number of people do really well, while a growing number of Americans barely get by,” Mr. Obama said, “or we can restore an economy where everyone gets a fair shot, everyone does their fair share and everyone plays by the same set of rules.”

By putting a significant accent on taxes, where his differences with Congressional Republicans have always been pronounced, Mr. Obama renewed the pressure on them to extend once again a temporary payroll tax break for most working Americans — and also amplified the attention that had been focused on the wealth of Mitt Romney, one of his leading challengers, who disclosed that he paid less than 15 percent on income of more than $20 million a year.

Mr. Obama fleshed out his populist message with new proposals to spur manufacturing, including tax breaks for companies that “insource” jobs back to the United States; to double-down on clean-energy incentives; and to improve education and job training initiatives, especially for the millions of long-term unemployed.

Economy Gains, Then Loses, Some Steam

In January 2012, Mr. Obama received some heartening news as he headed into his re-election campaign. The Labor Department said that employers in the United States added 200,000 jobs in December 2011, a report that came on the heels of a flurry of heartening economic news and signaled gathering momentum in the recovery.

Consumer confidence lifted, factories stepped up production and small businesses showed signs of life. The nation’s unemployment rate fell to 8.5 percent, its lowest level in nearly three years.

It was the sixth consecutive month that the economy showed a net gain of more than 100,000 jobs — not enough to restore employment to prerecession levels but enough, perhaps, to cheer Mr. Obama at the beginning of the election year.

Mr. Obama was likely calculating that he could make a credible argument that he took over a country in an economic disaster and slowly walked it back.

However, in April, the jobs report came with a message: don’t get ahead of yourself.

The country’s employers added a disappointing 120,000 jobs in March 2012, about half the net gains posted in each of the preceding three months. The unemployment rate, which comes from a separate survey of households rather than employers, slipped to 8.2 percent, from 8.3 percent, as a smaller portion of the population looked for work.

Politicians seized on the data, with Mitt Romney, the presumptive Republican nominee, characterizing the report as “weak and very troubling.” President Obama emphasized that employers had added more than 600,000 jobs in the previous three months, but acknowledged the “ups and downs” in the jobs picture.

The slowdown suggested that employers remained cautious about hiring as they digested the impact of rising gas prices, especially on consumers, and as they faced uncertainty about health care and pension costs.

Despite some indications, like falling unemployment claims, that the job market was finding its footing, anxieties have built about whether a stronger pace of recovery could be sustained.

Economists suggested that the trend among employers to wring more work from fewer people continued to be a hallmark of this recovery.

“What we are seeing now is an agonizingly slow recovery in the job market,” said Bernard Baumohl, chief global economist at the Economic Outlook Group. “I believe what this reflects is this laser focus intensity that business leaders have nowadays to try to be able to increase production with less reliance on labor as a means to do so.”

Private sector companies added 121,000 jobs in March as governments shed 1,000 jobs, driven by layoffs in the postal system and at the local level.

Among industries, manufacturing continued its run as the stalwart of job growth, adding 37,000 jobs in March.

But economists cautioned that factories were unlikely to bring back a majority of the two million people who lost their jobs during the recession.

Poll Shows Treacherous Political Ground

In March 2012, a New York Times/CBS News poll showed that despite improving job growth and an extended Republican primary fight dividing his would-be opponents, Mr. Obama is heading into the general election season on treacherous political ground. 

At a time of rising gas prices and heightened talk of war with Iran, Mr. Obama’s approval rating dropped substantially in just a few weeks, the poll found, with 41 percent of respondents expressing approval of the job he is doing and 47 percent saying they disapproved — a dangerous position for any incumbent seeking re-election.

The poll provided a statistical reminder of how unsettled and unpredictable this year’s political landscape remains. In February, Mr. Obama reached a critical benchmark by winning approval from 50 percent of Times/CBS News poll respondents, his re-election prospects lifting along with confidence that the nation was finally emerging from the aftermath of the Great Recession.

Mr. Obama appeared to be retaining much of his gains among important demographic groups, erasing inroads that Republicans made in 2010, especially among women. But his falling approval rating in the last month extended to his handling of both the economy and foreign policy, the poll found.

Mr. Obama’s aides have expressed concern that rising gas and fuel prices and outside forces like the turmoil overseas or a spike in unemployment could harm his political standing.

Defending His Energy Strategy

In what was billed as the first salvo of sorts in a more formal phase of the campaign, Mr. Obama defended his administration’s energy policy at a rally in Maryland in March 2012.

He delivered a notably sarcastic rebuttal to his Republican presidential challengers at the time, particularly Newt Gingrich, who promised, if elected, to bring down gas prices to $2.50 a gallon.

Without naming Mr. Gingrich, Mr. Obama said these gibes — by people “who are running for a certain office” — revealed a streak of ignorance similar to those who predicted that cars would not supplant horse-drawn buggies or that television would never elbow out radio.

Turning the spotlight on the remarks of his opponents may make sense because Mr. Obama’s defense of his role in rising gas prices rests on an uncomfortable claim: he cannot do much about it.

“There’s no silver bullet,” the president declared. “Anybody who tells you otherwise isn’t really looking for a solution; they’re trying to ride the political wave of the moment.”

Mr. Obama cycled through his record of increased domestic oil and gas production; stricter fuel-efficiency standards for cars and trucks; and investments in alternative sources of energy, like biofuels, wind and solar power. 

Addressing critics who say the United States could meet its energy needs through more drilling, Mr. Obama said his administration had opened millions of acres in 23 states to drilling, as well as an offshore area in the Gulf of Mexico that could yield 400 million barrels of oil.

Foreign Policy: Iraq and Afghanistan

The crucial issues in foreign policy during Mr. Obama’s first two years in office were what to do about the two ongoing wars involving American troops: Iraq, where he stuck with his pledge to draw down troops, and Afghanistan, where he sent in tens of thousands more.

On Dec. 15, 2011, the American military formally ended its mission in Iraq, one that cost the lives of 4,487 service members, with another 32,226 wounded in action. Soon after the departure of the last American convoy, the country was engulfed in political and sectarian conflict. 

In January 2012, a Shiite governor threatened to blockade an important commercial arterial road from Baghdad to the semi-autonomous Kurdish region in the north if Kurdish officials did not hand over Vice President Tariq al-Hashimi to government authorities. The Shiite-led national government accused Mr. Hashimi, a Sunni, of running a sectarian death squad. 

The same month, the advocacy group Human Rights Watch said the Americans had left behind a “budding police state,” with the country’s Shiite leadership increasingly ruling by force and fear. Insurgent attacks surged across the country, and security forces loyal to the Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, a Shiite, pressed a campaign against Sunni politicians.

The turmoil came at a time when Iraqis had hoped their leaders would be emboldened by their new independence to tackle the nation’s multitude of problems — finally confronting the social, economic and religious divisions that were papered over by the presence of American troops.

But while there remained hope that Iraqis could still unite, the country was far from the “sovereign, stable and self-reliant” place that  President Obama described at the time of the American military withdrawal.

In June 2011, President Obama declared that the United States had largely achieved its goals in Afghanistan, setting in motion an aggressive timetable for the withdrawal of American troops by 2014.

The military’s plans for 2012 emphasized deploying American and allied military trainers directly within Afghan security units, which could lessen the direct combat role of NATO.

In a major milestone, in February 2012, Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta said that American forces would step back from a combat role there as early as mid-2013, more than a year before all American troops are scheduled to come home.

Mr. Panetta cast the decision as an orderly step in a withdrawal process long planned by the United States and its allies, but his comments were the first time that the United States had put a date on stepping back from its central role in the war. The defense secretary’s words reflected the Obama administration’s eagerness to bring to a close the second of two grinding ground wars it inherited from the Bush administration.

Meanwhile, according to a classified report from mid-January 2012, American and other coalition forces were being killed in increasing numbers by the very Afghan soldiers they fought alongside and trained. The report made clear that these killings had become the most visible symptom of a far deeper ailment plaguing the war effort: the contempt each side holds for the other. The ill will and mistrust run deep among civilians and militaries on both sides.

Also in early 2012, the Taliban gave its first public sign that it was ready for peace talks. On Jan. 3, the Taliban announced that it had struck a deal to open a peace mission in the Persian Gulf state of Qatar. The step was a sharp reversal of the Taliban’s longstanding public denials that it was involved or interested in any negotiations to end its insurgency in Afghanistan.

But in February, angry protests broke out and shock rippled through Afghanistan as accounts emerged of NATO personnel setting fire to bags filled with Korans at Bagram Air Base. The incident sparked nearly a week of virulent anti-American demonstrations in which at least 30 people, including four American troops, were killed, and many were wounded.

In an attempt to quell the anger, President Obama sent a letter of apology to President Karzai. “The error was inadvertent,” Mr. Obama said in the letter. “I assure you that we will take the appropriate steps to avoid any recurrence, to include holding accountable those responsible.”

And in March, Robert Bales, a United States Army Staff Sergeant, was charged with killing 17 civilians, 9 of them children in a rampage in a rural stretch of southern Afghanistan.

Mr. Obama pledged a thorough investigation and said the furor stirred up by the rampage would not alter the policy or timetable of the United States as it winds down the war in Afghanistan.

The damage to the American military mission was incalculable. Days after the attack, Mr. Karzai demanded that the United States confine troops to major bases by 2013, and the Taliban announced that they were suspending peace talks.

In April 2012, after months of negotiations, the United States and Afghanistan completed drafts of a strategic partnership agreement that pledges American support for Afghanistan for 10 years after the withdrawal of combat troops at the end of 2014.

The agreement represents an important moment when the United States begins the transition from being the predominant foreign force in Afghanistan to serving a more traditional role of supportive ally.

By broadly redefining the relationship between Afghanistan and the United States, the deal builds on hard-won understandings the two countries reached on the thorny issues of detainees and Special Operations raids. It covers social and economic development, institution building, regional cooperation and security.

Mr Obama made a surprise trip to Afghanistan where, on May 1, he and Mr. Karzai signed the strategic partnership agreement. The signing ceremony took place one year after the killing of bin Laden.

The Middle East

In September 2010, Mr. Obama convened a new round of Middle East peace talks, bringing Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and the Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas, to the White House. But the talks quickly foundered over a Palestinian demand that Israel extend a moratorium that had stopped most building in occupied areas of the West Bank, and the Palestinians focused instead on a plan to seek recognition as a nation from the United Nations in September 2011. The effort  stalled in the Security Council.

Palestinian and Israeli negotiators met again in Jordan in January 2012, in an effort to revive moribund peace talks, although none of the sides involved suggested any reason to view the meeting as a sign of significant progress. Palestinian officials reported little or no progress in the meetings and, on Jan. 25, Mr. Abbas said that discussions had ended.

When rebellions broke out across the Arab world in January 2011, Mr. Obama responded initially with caution but eventually used American air power as part of a NATO effort to keep Libya’s dictator, Col. Muammar Qaddafi, from violently ending a rebellion there. Mr. Qaddafi fell from power in August and was captured and killed in October.

The Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party was the clear winner in Egypt’s first parliamentary elections, which concluded in January 2012. The Salafis, an alliance of ultraconservative Islamists, won the next largest share of seats.

The relatonship between the Egyptian government and the United States grew increasingly strained, culminating in the indictment in February 2012 of 16 Americans in a criminal investigation into the foreign financing of nonprofit groups. The military government’s prosecution of the nonprofit groups put American aid to Egypti n jeopardy. The trial opened, adjourned and was postponed. In face-saving move, the Americans were allowed to leave the country.

In Yemen, after more than a year of antigovernment protests and violent clashes in the street, President Ali Abdullah Salehdullah  handed over power to his vice president, Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi, who was sworn in as president in February 2012, after a single-candidate election.

A pro-democracy uprising was brutally crushed in Bahrain; the United States, which bases its Navy’s Fifth Fifth Fleet there, looked the other way.

Syria was engulfed in protests against the government of President Bashar al-Assad. The United Nations and countries around the world condemned the crackdown and President Assad, but President Obama remained keenly aware of larger forces at play — namely, Iran and Russia — and of the dangers of intervening in another Arab country.

Iran and Nuclear Weapons

Concerns about an Iranian nuclear weapons program escalated with the publication in November 2011 of a report by United Nations weapons inspectors that they said makes a “credible” case that “Iran has carried out activities relevant to the development of a nuclear device” and that the project may still be under way.

Mr. Obama responded by signing new legislation that could penalize buyers of Iranian oil. The European Union agreed to an oil embargo. In January 2012, pressure on Iran mounted, with the United States saying it was determined to isolate the country’s central bank.

Iran threatened to close the Strait of Hormuz, and the United States Navy threatened back. Government officials said the administration was relying on a secret channel of communication to warn Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, that closing the strait was a “red line” that would provoke an American response.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, vowed to retaliate over oil sanctions and threats of military action by the West, warning that the United States in particular would face severe damage to its interests if any strike were carried out against its nuclear sites.

The pointed remarks by Mr. Khamenei were the most public response by him to mounting tension between Western powers and Iran. They came amid increasing concern among American officials that Israel may strike at Iran’s nuclear facilities.

In late February, another report by United Nations nuclear inspectors stated thatIran was moving rapidly to produce nuclear fuel at a deep underground site. The U.N. inspectors found in their visits over the previous three months that Iran had tripled its production capacity for a type of fuel that is far closer to what is needed to make the core of a nuclear weapon.

Israel’s increasingly urgent warnings on the need to halt Iran’s nuclear progress continued to prompt concerns that Israel might unilaterally mount a military strike.

In early March, Mr. Obama met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, and urged him to to give diplomacy and economic sanctions a chance to work before resorting to military action on Iran. 

The meeting, held in a charged atmosphere of election-year politics and a deepening confrontation with Tehran, was nevertheless “friendly, straightforward, and serious,” a White House official said. But it did not resolve basic differences between the two leaders over how to deal with the Iranian threat.

Mr. Netanyahu, the official said, reiterated that Israel had not made a decision on striking Iran, but he expressed deep skepticism that international pressure would persuade Iran’s leaders to forsake the development of nuclear weapons.

Mr. Obama, an official said, argued that the European Union’s impending oil sanctions and the blacklisting of Iran’s central bank could yet force Tehran back to the bargaining table — not necessarily eliminating the nuclear threat but pushing back the timetable for the development of a weapon.

The next day, Mr. Obama challenged his Republican critics who have argued for a military strike against Iran to make a case to the American people. “This is not a game,” he said during a news conference at the White House. “Those who are suggesting, or proposing, or beating the drums of war, should explain clearly to the American people what the costs and benefits would be.”

The Problem of Pakistan

In one of Mr. Obama’s greatest accomplishments while in office, in May 2011, he announced that American special forces had killed Osama bin Laden in a nighttime raid deep inside Pakistan.

As a result, the antiterrorism alliance between the United States and Pakistan, always complicated and often shaky, was plunged into a crisis. The fact that Bin Laden had been hiding for years almost in plain sight in a medium-size city that hosts numerous Pakistani forces an hour’s drive from the capital underscored questions about whether elements of the Pakistani spy agency knew the whereabouts of the leader of Al Qaeda.

In the months since then, both sides have leveled angry criticism of the other. In July, the Obama administration suspended and, in some cases, canceled hundreds of millions of dollars of aid to the Pakistani military. But the administration remains dependent on Pakistan’s military for help in reining in the militant groups that are driving the conflict in Afghanistan but find shelter across the border — not only the Taliban but also the Haqqani terrorist network.

American-Pakistani relations took a turn for the worse in late November 2011 when a NATO air attack killed 26 Pakistani soldiers in strikes against two military posts at the country’s northwestern border with Afghanistan. Pakistan halted joint operations and intelligence sharing on the border. Within the country, friction between the military and civilian leaders intensified.

Supreme Court

Mr. Obama has placed two justices on the Supreme Court. When Justice David H. Souter retired in 2009, Mr. Obama nominated the federal appeals judge Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court, choosing a daughter of Puerto Rican parents raised in Bronx public housing projects to become the nation’s first Hispanic justice. In May 2010, Justice John Paul Stevens also announced that he would be stepping down. Mr. Obama chose his solicitor general, Elena Kagan, as the successor to Justice Stevens, who had been the court’s most liberal member.

For more on Barack Obama’s life before the presidency, click here for excerpts from “OBAMA: The Historic Journey,” which was written by Jill Abramson, then the managing editor of The New York Times, in collaboration with the reporters and editors of the Times who covered Mr. Obama’s campaign. The book was published by The New York Times and Callaway.

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