Obama's in-box: can President Obama avoid the 'second term curse' and tackle the many challenges facing the nation?

• Author: Smith, Patricia
• Position: NATIONAL

For President Obama, the start of his second term on January 20 is a second chance.

After a bruising re-election campaign and a four-year education on the realities of getting things done in Washington, Obama is a very different leader from the man who was elected with great fanfare in 2008.

Four years ago, when voters sent an idealistic young senator to the White House as the nation's first black president, many Americans had incredibly high expectations. They wanted Obama to stop a severe recession from turning into a depression, reform health care, fix a broken immigration system, deal with climate change, and--as if all that wasn't enough--transform Washington's increasingly partisan political culture. Obama's 2008 campaign slogan--"Hope and Change"--said it all.

Now, most voters simply want Obama to make Washington function again.

"He needs to do something dramatic to reset the atmosphere and ... demonstrate that he is very serious about finding bipartisan solutions," says David Boren, a former senator who's now president of the University of Oklahoma.

As a second-term president, Obama is in a better position to do that. He can't run again (the 22nd Amendment limits presidents to two terms), so he doesn't have to worry as much about his polls or his popularity. Instead, experts say, he's likely to be more focused on his -"place in history"--which will be determined largely by his ability to get things done before he leaves office in 2017.

Washington Gridlock

That's no small task in a Washington mired in gridlock. With Republicans still in control of the House of Representatives and the Senate closely divided between Republicans and Democrats, the president will need Republican support to get any major legislation through Congress.

Members of both parties have expressed hope that some of the rancor can be toned down now that the election is over.

"I'm not suggesting we compromise on our principles," Speaker of the House John Boehner, a Republican, said soon after Obama's victory. "But I am suggesting we commit ourselves to creating an atmosphere where we can see common ground when it exists and seize it."

At the top of everyone's agenda in Washington is the economy. The unemployment rate, at 7.7 percent, is down but remains high. And the housing market--a critical component of the economy--is recovering in parts of the country, but is still fragile. (Of course, Washington's next steps on the economy depend on how negotiations turn out between the White House and congressional Republicans over the "fiscal cliff" deadline on New Year's Day. That wasn't clear as Upfront went to press.)

Another big issue requiring a bipartisan solution is fixing America's immigration system. Democrats have generally favored creating a path to citizenship for the 11 million illegal immigrants in the United States. Republicans have generally opposed what they see as amnesty for lawbreakers. The Dream Act, which would have provided a path to citizenship for young people brought to the U.S. illegally as children, failed in Congress in 2010 because it lacked enough Republican support. But Obama acted on his own to implement some of its provisions last summer.

Considering how crucial the Hispanic vote turned out to be in Obama's re-election and the...