Why Can't Obama Govern?

After the gun control failure, Americans are debating whether their president is already a lame duck.

Recently, when the Senate voted against all proposals to tighten gun laws in the U.S., Barack Obama suffered his biggest political defeat yet as president — a defeat that has since led to an intense discussion in the political circles of Washington. Has president Obama, just 100 days into his second term, already become a lame duck?

The debate is a variation of the general puzzlement of many people across the globe regarding the 44th president of the United States: If he is so popular, if he is such a good speaker, if he gets elected with such convincing numbers of votes, why can he not govern? Why can he not close the prison in Guantánamo? Why can he not adopt a long-term plan to create stability for the U.S. economy? Why has he not done something about climate change or improved conditions for the lowest class, consisting of the 11 million undocumented workers and — very relevant at the moment — why can he not even get a law passed on compulsory background checks for weapons purchases, when 80 to 90 percent of the American voters support the idea? Or, as ABC journalist Jonathan Karl inquired last week [directly addressing Obama], when Obama held a press conference exactly 100 days into his second term, “Do you still have the juice to get the rest of your agenda through this Congress?”

A visibly annoyed Obama sarcastically replied that maybe he should just pack up and go home, but then added:

“Golly. You know, the — I think it’s — it’s a little — as Mark Twain said, you know, rumors of my demise may be a little exaggerated at this point.”

Commentator: Do It Like in the Movies

It is hardly surprising that conservative commentators, long ago and with ill-concealed glee, wrote off Obama.

In The Wall Street Journal, commentator Peggy Noonan described the president as passive, weak and without the power to get any legislation though the Senate: “There are 44 months left to Mr. Obama’s presidency. He’s not a lame duck, he’s just lame.”

But what has clearly done most harm to the president is that criticism also comes from within his own ranks — most significantly from The New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd, who recently used an entire column to mock the president for his gun laws defeat. According to Dowd, the problem is that Obama does not understand how Washington works.

“The White House should have created a war room full of charts with the names of pols they had to capture, like they had in ‘The American President,'” Dowd wrote, referring to a film from 1995, written by Aaron Sorkin, the man behind the TV series “The West Wing,” with actor Michael Douglas in the lead.

“Soaring speeches have their place, but this was about blocking and tackling,” Dowd established.

A couple of days later, when Obama attended the yearly White House correspondents’ dinner, he chose quite unusually to give a commentator a direct retort and, although it was in the shape of a joke, the gravity behind it was clear:

“Maureen Dowd said I could solve all my problems if I were just more like Michael Douglas in ‘The American President.’ And I know Michael is here tonight. Michael, what’s your secret, man? Could it be that you were an actor in an Aaron Sorkin liberal fantasy,” sounded off the president with caustic sarcasm.

But the duel was not over. In her next column, Dowd repeated her point about Obama being too weak and that his job is simply to get Congress to toe the line, no matter how clumsy and stubborn the politicians are: “It’s called leadership. He still thinks he’ll do his thing from the balcony and everyone else will follow along below. That’s not how it works.”

The column brought Obama’s former speechwriter, Jon Favreau, to figuratively shake his head in despair. In a comment on the website The Daily Beast, he tried to convey the basis of the U.S. political system, which was deliberately constructed in such a way as to not give too much power to the president.

“The founders, reluctant to entrust any executive with the kind of authority that was so abused by the king they revolted against, created a separation of powers between co-equal branches of government,” he wrote. But how boring is that?” he added.

According to Favreau, the case is simply put that the Republicans in Congress refuse to participate in any compromise on the issues Obama categorizes as top priority. They fear that any concession can be used against them by even more uncompromising Republicans and tea party politicians the next time they are up for election.

The analysis was supplemented by the commentator Ezra Klein, who pointed out that the polarization of American politics makes it almost impossible for the president to act. He blames the media for presenting it as if it is all just a matter of a little better leadership, and that everything will work out if a new president is chosen.

“That’s terrifically convenient, because that also happens to be the part of American politics that voters most enjoy participating in and that media most enjoys covering,” he wrote.

The point is simply that — apart from foreign policy matters, where the president’s freedom of action is greater — power in the American system is actually concentrated in Congress. No law can be passed without the two chambers of Congress. Both currently have Republicans who are in a position to block any compromise, and they do just that. It makes Obama look weak, and you do not need a doctorate to realize that for many Republicans that is exactly their main goal.