Obama, Barack; votingU.S. Pres. Barack Obama voting in the 2012 general election.Official White House Photo by Pete Souza
The Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting
Gun violence was once again at the centre of the national dialogue after 20 children and 6 adults were killed in a mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut on December 14, 2012. (The shooter also killed himself and his mother that day.) Obama echoed the widespread public concern by asking Congress to enact new gun-control legislation that would mandate universal background checks for gun purchases, eliminate the sales of assault weapons and magazines containing more than 10 rounds of ammunition, provide for enhanced protection in schools, and put renewed focus on the treatment of mental illness. As Obama sought to marshal support for such legislation, the National Rifle Association and other gun-rights advocates actively campaigned against it. In April 2013 the Senate debated and then took preliminary votes on a gun-control bill and a series of amendments that by consent of both parties needed a filibuster-proof supermajority of 60 votes before the bill would be submitted for formal passage. Notwithstanding polls that indicated overwhelming public support for universal background checks, a measure that called for greatly expanded background checks failed to garner sufficient support (winning only a simple majority, 54–46). Although the vote generally followed party lines, a handful of Republicans supported the measure and a few Democrats opposed it. All the related amendments also failed, and the bill was withdrawn.
Sandy Hook Elementary School shootingA Connecticut State Police officer leading children out of the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, after a mass shooting at the school on December 14, 2012.Shannon Hicks—Newtown Bee/AP
“Sequester” cuts, the Benghazi furor, and Susan Rice on the hot seat
The budget compromise reached in January delayed for two months the automatic cuts on military and social spending that had been mandated by Congress in July 2012 if Democrats and Republicans failed to agree on an alternative approach to deficit reduction. When the new March 31, 2013, deadline passed without an agreement, the initial round of these so-called “sequester” cuts went into effect. The first high-profile consequence of the cuts, significant delays in air travel resulting from mandatory furloughs for air-traffic controllers, was quickly addressed by Congress authorizing the Federal Aviation Administration to shift funds from facility improvement to salaries. As the spring progressed, however, officials of more and more federally funded programs and agencies bemoaned the reductions to the services they provided that resulted from the sequester cuts.
Obama’s efforts to move forward with his second-term agenda were compromised by a number of controversies in which the administration was embroiled. Republican criticism of the government’s role in the Benghazi attacks had been ongoing, but it escalated in May, when assertions of mismanagement and unpreparedness were compounded by renewed accusations of a cover-up, which many Republicans saw reflected in a recently released e-mail exchange between officials of the State Department and the CIA that had preceded UN Ambassador Susan Rice’s appearance on television news programs a few days after the attacks. Characterizing the e-mail string as a dialogue grounded not in politics but in an effort to convey the changing understanding of events that had occurred just a few days previously, the administration dismissed the Republican allegations as politically motivated.
The IRS scandal, the Justice Department’s AP phone records seizure, and Edward Snowden’s leaks
Also in May 2013, Obama joined Republicans in roundly castigating the Internal Revenue Service after revelations that employees of the department had excessively scrutinized conservative groups’ applications for tax-exempt status. Obama asked for and accepted the resignation of the department’s acting commissioner and promised to reform the department, but, unsatisfied, Republicans led further investigations into the matter.
That month Republicans as well as many Democrats also were outraged over revelations that the Department of Justice, as part of an investigation into a news leak related to a foiled terrorist plot, had subpoenaed and seized two months’ worth of phone records of reporters and editors who worked in several Associated Press offices in May 2012 without notifying that organization. Despite Attorney General Eric Holder’s explanation that the news leak was serious, Republicans characterized the action as an egregious violation of the First Amendment and again pursued further congressional inquiries.
The government’s accessing of phone records was again the issue when in June 2013 Edward Snowden, an American intelligence contractor, revealed through The Guardian newspaper that the National Security Agency had compelled telecommunications company Verizon to turn over metadata (such as numbers dialed and duration of calls) for millions of its subscribers. He also disclosed the existence of a broader data-mining program that gave the NSA, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the Government Communications Headquarters—Britain’s NSA equivalent—“direct access” to the servers of such Internet giants as Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and Apple. Snowden was charged with espionage by the U.S. and ultimately ended up in Russia, where he received temporary refugee status. In August, Bradley Manning, who had provided the Web site WikiLeaks with hundreds of thousands of classified documents in 2010, was convicted of espionage and theft, among other charges, and sentenced to 35 years in prison.
Removal of Mohammed Morsi, Obama’s “red line” in Syria, and chemical weapons
Developments in Egypt and Syria in 2013 continued to provide major challenges for U.S. foreign policy. When protests against the Egyptian military’s removal of Mohammed Morsi from the presidency in July led to the killing of hundreds of his supporters in July and August, some American politicians called for the suspension of U.S. financial aid to Egypt (more than $1 billion per year), citing U.S. law that required the federal government to terminate aid if power in the recipient country changed as a result of a coup. Attempting to maintain a neutral stance, the Obama administration hesitated to label Morsi’s removal a coup but called for a quick return to civilian leadership.
Seemingly reluctant to be drawn into military involvement in another conflict in the Middle East, the administration had also been cautious in its response to the Syrian Civil War. While it had begun providing food and financial aid to those who were opposing the regime of Syrian Pres. Bashar al-Assad in February 2013, the U.S. government did not provide military support to the opposition until June, largely in response to reports of the use of chemical weapons by Syrian government forces. Commenting on a possible U.S. response to events in Syria, Obama had said in May 2012, “We have been very clear to the Assad regime, but also to other players on the ground, that a red line for us is, we start seeing a whole bunch of chemical weapons moving around or being utilized.” In late August 2013, in response to reports that an alleged chemical attack by the Syrian government had killed hundreds of people in suburban Damascus on August 21, Obama and British Prime Minister David Cameron, in a statement released by Cameron’s office, “reiterated that significant use of chemical weapons would merit a serious response from the international community”; both men tasked officials of their governments and military “to examine all the options.”