Limited

Now that Leon Panetta’s book has revealed the inner workings of White House policymaking the demonization has begun but, more importantly, the crack in the dike is widening. Jonathan Alter remarks:

Panetta confirms what has been whispered about for years—that Obama shows “a frustrating reticence to engage his opponents and rally support for his cause.” The president often “relies on the logic of a law professor rather than the passion of a leader,” Panetta writes. In reflecting on the president’s habit of bitching privately about obstructionist Republicans without cleverly confronting them, he notes that Obama “avoids the battle, complains, and misses opportunities.”

Panetta is particularly concerned that Obama didn’t fight harder on the sequestration cuts that Panetta believes were harmful to national defense. But the criticism, now hardening into the conventional wisdom among Democrats, also applies to a variety of other issues, where the president had a habit of leading the Democratic troops into battle with a few speeches but not adopting the single piece of advice Oliver Wendell Holmes gave Franklin D. Roosevelt during his first week in office: “Form your battalion and fight.”

The arsenal of tools available to politicians is large. There’s dealmaking, logrolling, compromise, enlisting allies, cultivating friendships, threatening, shaming, cajoling, and persuasion. Sadly, the only device this president seems to be comfortable in employing is the blunt instrument of politics, power politics. It’s understandable for a politician who honed his craft in Chicago but it’s too limited a repertoire for the national scene, especially when you don’t have the votes for it.