Stephen Crowley/The New York Times
SEAN SULLIVAN, WASHINGTON POST
Fine, Congress. You don't want to play ball? I'll do it without you.
That was the core of President Obama's State of the Union message Tuesday night when he announced plans to wield his executive power with a new urgency. Part of it will involve using executive orders to bypass Congress, which we might see with more frequency from this president.
So will the use of executive orders sway the public broadly one way or the other, especially with Republicans sounding the executive overreach alarm? Probably not.
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Off-year elections tend to be won and lost over which party turns out their base. This is why Republicans will continue to assail Obama's use of executive power. By the same token, there is a political upside for Obama to sign more orders. It's not just about policy. His base cheers these moves.
Through 2013, Obama signed 167 executive orders, according to the Federal Register, which tracks such things. That's fewer than every president in the same time period dating back to Harry Truman. In fact, George H.W. Bush signed just about as many (166) in a single term as Obama did in his first five calendar years as president. And in less than a full term in the White House, Gerald Ford eclipsed Obama's total.
N.Y. TIMES
But the numbers matter less than the scope of the ones that are signed. Mr. Obama has unilaterally deferred deportation of younger illegal immigrants, delayed enforcement of his health care law and declined to defend legal challenges against the Defense of Marriage Act, a law barring federal recognition of same-sex marriages.
SEAN SULLIVAN, WASHINGTON POST
But if you're looking for an issue that could reshape the way the public broadly feels about Obama this year, executive orders likely isn't one.