Oaths before office

"I guess presidents should stop saying "in my first year, I'll blah blah blah," as it's not really up to them. But beyond that, what are they supposed to do?"

Well lets unpack this a little bit. Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and the rest announced for president in Jan 2007, and spent two years spending hundreds of millions of dollars in radio ads, TV commercials, nonstop news coverage, endless debates, et al describing how different the world would be, if only you'd vote Obama into the White House. And you know what? The public believed it.

Marketing works.

I'm naturally a cynic, and am old enough and politically informed enough to realize there's the Senate to deal with, there's the economy, various other things a president has to do upon actually taking office, but most people are not this deep in the weeds. You sold them a shiny red sports car, and they want it. Lecturing them about how they shouldnt be so stupid as to want all this now strikes me as a bit condescending.

I'm for almost everything Obama ran for president to do, and realize much of it cant get done right now for various reasons, but thats the stuff he should be fighting to change. If the Senate's rules are a problem, how about the president of the united states say so more regularly??

Zepplin003, I think the healthcare fight has been high profile enough that it's really made it clear to average people how overly complex our system is a getting legislation through to a vote. It's not just the filibuster, which I think people are at least vaguely familiar with, but all the committees, compromises, recomprimises and individual power plays that make it difficult or impossible to get legislation to the point where it can be voted on.

You're right that now that we have pundits talking openly about our system being broking we need to start seeing more elected officials highlighting the structural problems. Maybe we can even get a few people elected on a structural reform platform.

So your arguement is that Obama made promises while campaigning and then didn't follow through becuase of Congress so it is not Obamas fault. Nothing is the great Obama's fault.

People to blame for Obama not being the greatest president ever, because otherwise he would be -

1.) 8 years of Bush
2.) The party of "no"
3.) Right-wing media (Fox)
3.) People that disagree with him
4.) Congress
5.) The rest of the world for not buying into him

Good morning Ezra,

As citizens, we want to know the positions/philosophies of our political candidates (I know that's optimistic) in order to make our electoral choices. We cannot know, nor is there any process to vet, how those candidates will operate/accommodate a group decision-making process, which is our form of government. I don't think the process or the promises are the issue. The real question is how a politician reacts when given an actual choice... do they follow their espoused philosophy/position, do they hold their nose for real-politic, or do they give you the finger and smirk?

In the case of President Obama, the list of five bills he's signed into law, along with the health care reform and the climate change bill still in progress, is phenomenal. This is after 10 months in office, with two wars, the worst recession/depression in the modern (post-WWII) economy, the largest post-WWII deficits, and a federal bureaucracy that was actively gutted by the prior administration.

So far, Obama has been following his philosophies when given a real choice, or in a few cases, he's been holding his nose for real-politic. Let's check back in after another year.

Holla26, the point isn't that nothing is Obama's fault, it's that Presidential candidates always make legislative promises that they can't uphold without the cooperation of Congress. As we've seen, Congress is not a body that is capable of passing much in the way of legislation these days.

Good to know that Ezra's adherence to the Bystander President theory of governance is so consistent and unyielding. We really should have a new Voltaire write a new Candide to describe the phenomenon in which whatever Obama achieves is the most that could ever have been achieved. Good times!

When you're handed a mandate, and then squander it, it points to a failure of leadership.

Pretty simple stuff, really. A lot simpler than blaming Obama's failure to lead on the congress.