Norm Ornstein says yes, we do, and has a major beef with people who argue that things would work better in Washington if Obama was a better leader and could work his will with Congress. He reminds readers that our system does not work that way, and it never has even though we like to think otherwise.
. . . at nearly every speech I give, someone asks about President Obama’s
failure to lead. Of course, that question has been driven largely by
the media, perhaps most by Bob Woodward. When Woodward speaks,
Washington listens, and he has pushed the idea that Obama has failed in
his fundamental leadership task—not building relationships with key
congressional leaders the way Bill Clinton did, and not “working his
will” the way LBJ or Ronald Reagan did.
Now, after the failure to get the background-check bill through the
Senate, other reporters and columnists have picked up on the same
theme, and I have grown increasingly frustrated with how the mythology
of leadership has been spread in recent weeks. I have yelled at the
television set, “Didn’t any of you ever read Richard Neustadt’s classic
Presidential Leadership? Haven’t any of you taken Politics 101 and read about the limits of presidential power in a separation-of-powers system?”
But the issue goes beyond that, to a willful ignorance of history.
No one schmoozed more or better with legislators in both parties than
Clinton. How many Republican votes did it get him on his signature
initial priority, an economic plan? Zero in both houses. And it took
eight months to get enough Democrats to limp over the finish line. How
did things work out on his health care plan? How about his impeachment
in the House?
No one knew Congress, or the buttons to push with every key
lawmaker, better than LBJ. It worked like a charm in his famous 89th,
Great Society Congress, largely because he had overwhelming majorities
of his own party in both houses. But after the awful midterms in 1966,
when those swollen majorities receded, LBJ’s mastery of Congress didn’t
mean squat.
No one defined the agenda or negotiated more brilliantly than
Reagan. Did he “work his will”? On almost every major issue, he had to
make major compromises with Democrats, including five straight years
with significant tax increases. But he was able to do it—as he was able
to achieve a breakthrough on tax reform—because he had key Democrats
willing to work with him and find those compromises.
For Obama, we knew from the get-go that he had no Republicans
willing to work with him. As Robert Draper pointed out in his book Do Not Ask What Good We Do,
key GOP leaders such as Eric Cantor and Paul Ryan determined on
inauguration eve in January 2009 that they would work to keep Obama and
his congressional Democratic allies from getting any Republican votes
for any of his priorities or initiatives. Schmoozing was not going to
change that.
