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Howard Fineman is right : President Obama has to build Popular Pressure against a recalcitrant Congress, specially a U. S. House populated by Dogmatic Dogmatists, that is ideologues of the Republican Party, filled with Intransigence, Stubbornness, Obstinacy, Zealotry, Doctrinalism, Fanaticism, Prejudice and even Racism and Hatred.
Obama has to use the "Bully Pulpit" as president Theodore Roosevelt used to say, more than one hundred years ago. He has to inform, illustrate, and teach to the American People.
But relax, I am sure that Obama is a Great Man and a Great President. His power as a great Leader and Statesman ( with capitals ) will grow in year 2013.
Huffington Post
Obama, Our Celebrity President, Faces Real World Test
February 25, 2013
By Howard Fineman
Editorial director, Huffington Post Media Group
Some excerpts :
President Barack Obama is facing a Washington version of Wall Street's "triple-witching hour," a pileup of fateful deadlines in tight sequence. He'll be hit with the $85 billion sequester cuts likely to begin Friday, a possible government-wide shutdown if no deal is reached on the overall budget by March 27 and yet another collision over the debt ceiling this summer.
So the show's plot is simple: Can a popular president, recently reelected and reigning supreme culturally and socially, master -- for the sake of prosperity and his vision of a just society -- the sclerotic tribal dynamics of Washington?
In his first term, Obama largely turned over the task of passing his signature health care reform to his Democratic allies on the Hill. This challenge now is more systemic, and Congress is more the problem than the solution.
Which means the president is going to have to handle this one personally. Building popular pressure can help. Indeed, it is indispensable. But restructuring the budget, the core challenge, is going to demand eons of time in private with people he doesn't like or trust.
The president doesn't hide his disdain for Congress, for the folkways of traditional Washington, for the petty egos in Congress and the media. He has unified the Democrats under his banner, but he doesn't think they need to be tended to personally.
As for the GOP, this isn't a level playing field; it's hardly a playing field at all. The Obamas are cool, appealing, connected (literally) and, as such, liked and trusted by most Americans. The GOP is none of those things, at least to most Americans, only 22 percent of whom identify themselves as Republicans today.
More important, Obama's policies are generally liked by the public as a whole. Voters claim to distrust government and surely dislike Washington, but they also agree with the president's we're-all-in-this-together domestic policies, his nonjudgmental social views and his natural (and seemingly growing) distrust of heavy military commitments abroad.
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