After a nine-day trip through Asia in which he showed command on the world stage, President Barack Obama is headed back to debt-deadlocked Washington, where he’ll confront fresh reminders of the limits of his power at home.
Obama departed from Bali’s international airport Saturday afternoon for a 21-hour flight that, factoring in time-zone changes, was to return him to the White House before dawn Sunday. He’ll be arriving days ahead of a deadline for a congressional supercommittee to produce recommendations to attack the country’s yawning deficit.
But even though the president spoke to the supercommittee leaders from Air Force One as he headed out of town and urged them to get a deal, the panel is no further along than when Obama left Washington: frozen stuck along partisan lines.
If no agreement is reached, steep cuts would be enacted across the federal government that both sides say they want to avoid, particularly to the defense budget. But no end game was in sight as Obama made his way back home from the other side of the globe.
Also awaiting him are presidential politics heading into the 2012 election year, something Obama largely avoided while traveling
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