Obama seen as lame duck president: Political analyst

Political divisions are growing among US officials as President Barack Obama approaches the end of his tenure and is seen as having less influence with other politicians, a political analyst in Berkeley says.

“People are considering Obama at this point to be a lame duck [president],” said Conn Hallinan, a columnist for Foreign Policy in Focus, a project of the Institute for Policy Studies, a think tank based in Washington, DC.

“There’s going to be resistance to him making any long-term policy moves at this point that might tie the hands of another administration that’s coming in,” Hallinan said it today.

“This raises all sorts of very serious problems, particularly around the nuclear negotiations with Iran,” he added.

He made the comments after US Defense Secretary Ashton Carter cast doubt Tuesday on whether the Guantanamo Bay detention facility in Cuba can be closed before Obama leaves the White House.

The closure of the US military prison was a campaign promise Obama made in 2008, but Congress has imposed restrictions on detainee releases.

“What you’ve got is a division in the administration, there’s divisions around Iran, there’s divisions around the Ukraine, there’s divisions around the war in Yemen, you have a divided administration,” Hallinan said.

“You see a battle going on between the old and neoconservatives that were such a important part of the Bush administration and some of the Obama people and Obama himself and the White House, so it’s a pretty serious matter,” he added.