Wite-Out and the White House
So were many of his existing achievements, including changes to how laws on immigration are enforced. Although Mr Obama has not used his presidential powers half as profligately as his critics claim—his immediate predecessors, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton, both issued many more orders—his inability to get much legislation passed since the Democrats lost control of the House in 2010 has made his record unusually dependent on them. And given that most Republicans candidates vow to erase many of those orders, his legacy is one bad election result away from looking rather thin.
In his peroration, Mr Obama alluded to that frailty. In the absence of much enthusiasm for electoral reform in Congress, he promised to “travel the country” making his case for it. That desirable change, which he himself once promised to bring about, “will only happen when the American people demand it”, he concluded. As so often, he is right and admirable in his diagnosis. Still, it is hard not to be dismayed by the image he left hanging in the divided House, of the president, once the change politician, reduced to wandering America like a mendicant preacher, appealing forlornly to its better nature.