I'm not sure if the reporter wrote the title and first paragraph of the article. It seems to go one way at first, i.e. "This president endures with little joy the small talk" but then wanders into a pointless summary of Obama's first few years in office. It almost returns to the original point at the end, "the person running out of air most quickly is Obama himself, and there may not be many who come to his rescue" but not quite.
The title could just as well have been "Obama, the loser president" for all the content of the article.