"There's always been a tension between things are in fact getting better and people are not feeling great," said Wade Randlett, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur and major Democratic donor. "One is economic fact, and the other is polling, which always catches up over time."
Now the president is so comfortable with the idea of talking up the economic recovery that his advisors have branded it — "America's resurgence" — and made it a regular talking point in Obama's stump speeches and weekly radio addresses. And it's likely to be a centerpiece of the State of the Union address on Tuesday.
The economic recovery has freed the president to push for more ambitious domestic policies, many of them designed to help those in the poor and middle class who are still lagging behind. In the past week alone he has announced new proposals on paid sick leave, free community college tuition and expanded broadband access. And while he might have trouble pushing those through the GOP-controlled Congress, Obama could still end up defining some of the key issues for the elections in 2016.
"The battle for the next American agenda is already on," said Donald Baer, chief executive of Burson-Marsteller and formerly chief speechwriter for President Bill Clinton. "There's this effort to define a new growth and share agenda — growth but not only growth alone and sharing the growth but not just sharing the wealth." He said Obama's college and broadband access are examples of proposals that could both add to growth and give poor and middle class people the tools to increase their share in it.
But Obama still has to balance his rhetoric — between optimism and caution — by talking up the strong recovery while acknowledging that wage growth remains weak.
In bragging about performance, Obama administration officials point to factors including the best streak of job growth since the 1990s, a recovery in the housing market and healthier balance sheets for households, companies and the federal government. And they have contrasted that performance with the anemic economies of Europe and Japan as evidence that the United States has regained its global economic dominance in what Obama has called a "breakthrough year for America."
But wages have been a stubborn reminder of the recovery's shortcomings. In November, average hourly private sector nominal wages inched up 6 cents but in December they actually fell 5 cents. After adjusting for inflation, wages for the entire year crawled up 0.7 percent, a modest amount in an economic recovery.
"The December decline in earnings is a reminder that more progress is still needed to overcome the decadeslong challenge in this area that preceded the crisis," Jason Furman, chairman of the president's Council of Economic Advisers, wrote on Jan. 9.
It's a point that has featured prominently in comments by Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat, who has emerged as a leader of the Democratic Party's liberal wing. But mainstream economists and even some Republicans are also talking about ways to address stagnant incomes and poverty.
"He should say that we're still a long way from an economy that works for everybody," said Arthur Brooks, president of the conservative American Enterprise Institute, who said that Warren's "diagnosis is right, but her prescription is worse."
Lawrence Summers, a former top adviser to Obama, said the country still needs more infrastructure investments, a higher minimum wage and a more progressive tax code.
"I'm feeling better about the economy, but I don't think we have in place a set of policies that will assure that this recovery will be either sustained or fully inclusive," said Summers, also a former Treasury Secretary and now a professor at Harvard University. "That's why I think more needs to be done."
There is no reason to expect Republicans on Capitol Hill, who have rejected such proposals before, to support those measures now. But a raise in the minimum wage and new infrastructure spending plans will likely occupy a prominent place in the largely aspirational State of the Union address anyway.
"He is the most persistent person I have ever met, so I'm sure he won't give up on infrastructure," said his former economic adviser Alan Krueger, an economics professor at Princeton University.
The White House typically aims its messages directly at the middle class, but, partly in response to Warren, Obama administration officials are now more comfortable talking about how some of its proposals benefit poorer Americans.
Council of Economic Advisers member Betsey Stevenson told reporters on Wednesday that instituting paid leave policies — like the one California adopted six years ago, and that the president is asking Congress to pass — is particularly important for working-class parents.
"Importantly, implementing paid leave in California helped lower-income women who were less able to afford taking unpaid leave prior to the law under (the Family and Medical Leave Act) to take time off to care for and bond with their infants," Stevenson said.
In some cases Obama is now willing to use his executive authority to push for changes, such as allowing federal workers to take advanced sick leave to care for a new child or an ill parent, in a way he wasn't last year. When asked about the timing of the new policy, Stevenson said the president "worked to figure out what was going to be within his capabilities, and expanding access to advanced sick leave is something that is within his capabilities. And that's why he's taking that action now."
Now is also a good time because in his seventh year in office, Obama can argue that the country has come a long way. White House officials hope to remind the public that the policies the administration pursued during the depths of the 2009 recession are now bearing fruit.
"He's not getting much credit for it, but turning around the economy with some very tough decisions was important," said James Thurber, director of American University's Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies.
Jim DeMint, the president of Heritage Foundation, agrees that some of the administration's first-term policies have had a powerful impact — but not in a good way. "Domestically," DeMint said of the president's lasting imprint, "it's just an unprecedented intervention through the force of government into the private sector."
Obama is also likely to talk on Tuesday about his foreign policy goals, which the economy has boosted, as well.
A rising economy not only "makes everything else a little bit easier (for) all the other policies he'd want to be launching," according to Duke University political science professor Peter Feaver, it also strengthens his hand internationally.
During the first year or two when Obama attended international meetings, Feaver recalled, he was subjected to "very lengthy, painful diatribes" about how the American economy was dragging down its overseas partners.
"You don't get those anymore because the U.S. economy is being seen as the hand to lift all others," Feaver said. "That puts the president is stronger position not just vis-à-vis our friends, but vis-à-vis our enemies."
Falling oil prices have also been a gift for Obama, putting cash in the hands of consumers. But they also add pressure on oil-dependent countries such as Russia and Iran that the United States is trying to persuade to alter their policies on Ukraine and nuclear issues.
Obama's negotiating position with Russian President Vladimir Putin might be stronger, but it's unclear what the stronger economy means for his relations with the GOP congressional leadership. Rep. Tom Cole of Oklahoma, who is close to House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio, said in a recent interview that if the president wants to pursue a major fiscal deal on something like entitlement reform, "this is the chance to actually do that."
Cole acknowledged it remained unclear if either congressional Republicans or the president were willing to buck some in their own parties enough to forge such a compromise. For Obama, he noted, it would mean throwing his lot in with the opposition.
"If you're really going to want entitlement reform, most of those votes are going to come from Republicans," he said. "You're still going to have to take some of the blame, because Republicans voted for the thing."
Tough and potentially unpopular proposals like taking on Social Security — or a gasoline tax — will not be in the State of the Union. But Obama will undoubtedly run through a laundry list of other issues, chief among them the Affordable Care Act, where he can point to millions of newly insured Americans and slowing health-care costs, achievements now threatened by a court challenge waiting before the Supreme Court.
Even with the usual guests in the balcony with their personal stories of woe and triumph, the speech could be long and wonky. But the president won't be shying away from ambitious proposals.
"We're on offense on minimum wage and the environment," Randlett said. "That's the kind you only do when you have the leash of good economics.
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