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 With both men trying to position their parties for 2016 elections
to choose a successor to Obama, the president and the Senate
majority leader will need to find ways to work together if they want
to overcome legislative gridlock and reach agreements on trade, tax
and economic issues.
It will not be easy. Obama, 53, and McConnell, 72, are not close and
have little in common. McConnell set a chilly tone to their
relationship by declaring in 2010 that his top priority was to make
sure Obama was a one-term president, a dream that was shattered when
the Democrat won re-election.
That creates an air of unpredictability about Tuesday, when
McConnell takes over as Senate majority leader and Republicans
welcome a bigger majority in the House of Representatives, giving
them a powerful counterweight to Obama in his final two years in
office.
"Both of them have to walk a tight rope," said Andy Smith, director
of the University of New Hampshire Survey Center.
Obama, who will lay out a broad agenda in his State of the Union
speech late this month, will seek agreement with Republicans on tax
reform and trade deals, areas that will test both parties.
He will push Republicans to agree to overhaul the tax code in ways
that will increase revenue, which they oppose, and try to persuade
pro-labor Democrats to go along with trade legislation that they
have long opposed.
"We're going to disagree on some things, but there are going to be
areas of agreement and we've got to be able to make that happen," he
said in a news conference last month.
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McConnell wants to ease regulations as a way to boost the U.S.
economy and will try to get approval of the Keystone XL
Canada-to-Texas pipeline. But he also wants fellow Republicans to
resist scaring voters with far-right proposals.
"I don't want the American people to think that if they add a
Republican president to a Republican Congress, that's going to be a
scary outcome. I want the American people to be comfortable with the
fact the Republican House and Senate is a responsible,
right-of-center governing majority," McConnell told the Washington
Post.
The two men may meet as early as next week.
(Reporting By Steve Holland; Editing by John Whitesides and Andrew
Hay)
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