The Limits of Presidential Leadership

Norm Ornstein:
“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.”