Seeking to Ease Worries, Obama Says the World Has Always Been ‘Messy’

By PETER BAKER

If the world seems troubled by all manner of calamities these days, President Obama does not want Americans to worry too much. After all, he said Friday, “The world has always been messy”; it is just more apparent because of social media. And, he added, today’s geopolitical threats are far less perilous than those of the Cold War.

Governing at a time of war, terrorism and disease, and frustrated on multiple fronts at once, Mr. Obama finds himself trying to buck up supporters heading into a crucial midterm election season. The succession of international crises has taken a toll on the public mood, not to mention his own poll ratings, and he seems intent on reassuring Americans that the challenges are manageable.

Michelle Obama and the family’s personal chef, Sam Kass, in the White House kitchen garden in 2010. On Saturday, the Obamas will attend Mr. Kass’s wedding to Alex Wagner of MSNBC.Sam Kass, the Obamas’ Foodmaster GeneralAUG. 28, 2014 As he spent Friday sweeping through New York and Rhode Island to raise hundreds of thousands of dollars for vulnerable Democrats, Mr. Obama addressed that public apprehension directly, acknowledging that many Americans “are feeling anxious” about their country and its place in the world. The showdown with Russia over Ukraine, the emergence of a radical new Islamic caliphate in Syria and Iraq, and the rise of China have stirred unease about the future of the United States, he said.

“If you watch the nightly news, it feels like the world is falling apart,” he said at a Democratic fund-raiser in Purchase, N.Y., just north of New York City. Expanding on a theme he has touched on at recent fund-raisers, Mr. Obama agreed that “we are living through some extraordinarily challenging times” and “I can see why a lot of folks are troubled.”

But Mr. Obama said Americans should remain calm and confident. “We will get through these challenging times just like we have in the past,” he said. “This is not something that is comparable to the challenges we faced during the Cold War.”

Mr. Obama attributed much of the turmoil to a rupture of the old order in the Middle East that is playing out across that region in often bloody and unpredictable ways, all of which “makes things pretty frightening.” But he said that the Middle East has “been challenging for quite a while” and that in some ways the main difference was that Americans were paying more attention because of the advent of new technologies bringing home faraway events in visceral ways.

“The truth of the matter is that the world has always been messy,” he said. “In part, we’re just noticing now because of social media and our capacity to see in intimate detail the hardships that people are going through.”

But on a day that Britain raised its terrorist threat level because of concerns about extremists in Syria and Iraq, Mr. Obama said his “main message” was that “America’s military superiority has never been greater” and that its defenses are stronger than they were before the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. A day after saying “we don’t have a strategy yet” to take on Islamic radicals in Syria, Mr. Obama made little effort to explain his approach to tackling myriad problems in the world, nor did he respond to critics who blame him in part for making those problems worse through what they say are ineffective policies. But he said that Russia and China were not countries to envy or fear and that America was still best-positioned for the future.

Continue reading the main storyContinue reading the main storyContinue reading the main story Mr. Obama flew to Westchester County, N.Y., for two events benefiting the Democratic National Committee. The first was a closed-door round table with about 25 supporters paying as much as $32,400 apiece. The event was hosted by George Logothetis, a shipping heir and chairman of the Libra Group, and his wife, Nitzia Logothetis, founder of Seleni, a nonprofit organization promoting mental health for women around the world. It was held at the home of Camilo Patrignani, the chief executive of Greenwood Energy, a subsidiary of Libra, and his wife, Lucia.

Evidently, during the event, Mr. Obama encountered some of the anxiety he later referred to, because at his next stop, which was open to reporters, he said someone had just suggested that he declare a national state of emergency, a notion he quickly discounted as not the way the United States worked.

That second event was a barbecue at the estate of two longtime benefactors, Robert Wolf, the former chairman of UBS Americas, and his wife, Carol Wolf, the coordinator of special projects for the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights.

About 250 supporters paid $15,000 or more per couple, according to the Democratic committee.

Mr. Obama then flew to Rhode Island to attend a fund-raiser for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in Newport. About 60 people paying as much as $32,400 apiece attended the event at Seafair, the home of Richard Bready, the former chief executive of Nortek, and his longtime partner, Betty Easton.

The president originally intended to fly back to Westchester County to spend the night and relax on Saturday but changed his mind and decided to fly back to Washington instead. He still planned to return to Westchester County on Saturday evening to attend the wedding of Sam Kass, his family’s personal chef, and Alex Wagner of MSNBC.