Delivering his final press conference of 2013, Barack Obama looked like a man who had already decided he was going to get the empty half of the cracker for Christmas. After a year this bad, the president could be forgiven for spending most of his Hawaiian holiday disconsolately ruffling the frizzy mop of Bo, the First Dog, muttering, “at least you understand me, buddy”. It had been a bruising 12 months for Obama — having begun with high hopes for a second term, but ended with the presidential approval rating down at a desultory 41 per cent. It is the same rock-bottom figure to which George W. Bush slumped in 2005 after his own fifth year in office.

The questions fired at Obama before the Christmas break told their own story, zooming in mercilessly on the biggest loss of 2013 for the president — not the botched Obamacare roll-out or indeed a trove of top secret documents from the National Security Agency (NSA) — but the far more priceless commodity that is his credibility with the public. “Has this been the worst year of your presidency?” someone asked with cruel bluntness. It went downhill from there as Obama was reminded that Politifact had awarded him the “Lie of the Year” for his “if you like your plan, you can keep your plan” Obamacare slogan. Hinting at lies again, another reporter asked Obama if he really believed those assurances he gave to the American public that the NSA spying programmes were “scrubbed” and nothing to worry about.

Even a city as divided as Washington agrees that Obama has pretty much hit the bottom of the well when it comes to approval ratings. The question is whether — unlike Bush, whose numbers never recovered — he can climb back out again. Obama has several advantages over Bush, not least that the US economy is now recovering, not tanking, as it was at the same time in Bush’s second term. And while Obama may be locked in a war of words with Congress Republicans, he is not mired in a real war going hopelessly wrong, as Bush was in Iraq. Indeed, 2014 is the year US troops will leave Afghanistan, meaning, Obama has something to celebrate already inked into his calendar.

And as for Obamacare, while far from a certain success, the websites and exchanges are now grinding into life and the “victims” of that particular fight — those who will pay more for their health insurance, not less — are relatively few in number. It also is not impossible — as Ronald Reagan had shown at the end of his second term — that Obama may yet be saved by his foreign policy, aided by John Kerry, a Secretary of State whose sheer energy and willingness to lead (unlike his boss) has been a welcome change in many capitals last year. Reagan showed what was possible. In early 1987, his ratings had plummeted so far (42 per cent), following the Iran-Contra scandal, that when he welcomed that year’s SuperBowl champions to the White House and the captain thanked the fans, Reagan was heard to observe: “Yes, I used to have fans.” But within a year, Reagan’s ratings were back over 50 per cent as he took credit for the sudden warming of ties with the Soviet Union and staged his historic summits with Mikhail Gorbachev. The real question is whether Obama — and a second-string team of advisers at the White House who keep putting up backs in Congress, including among Democrats — can re-emerge as a force for progress. Already a fight looms over Iran sanctions this month — thanks to a clumsy White House promise to veto a bill that was co-signed by 15 Democrat senators, with the promise of perhaps another 15 signatures to come. But instead of cutting a deal with Democrat senators facing re-election in the mid-terms — several with donors and electorates that want a tough line on Iran — Obama took the opportunity in his press conference to sneer at them. “I think the politics of trying to look tough on Iran are often good when you’re running for office or if you’re in office,” said the man who has run his last election. It is the kind of unnecessary clumsiness that has been the hallmark of this White House’s dealings with Congress.

Obama is right. He has plenty going for him in 2014, but the underlying tailwinds will mean nothing without a change of attitude at the top. “A couple [of] days of sleep and sun” — the president’s own prescription for erasing the wounds of 2013 — will not be enough.

— The Telegraph Group Limited, London, 2013