Barack Obama

the "bully pulpit" is just a romantic notion of what politics used to be. I use the example of someone really wanting to borrow your friend's car ... you can ask your friend to allow that person to borrow his/her car; you can beg, threaten, cajol, your friend, but at the end of the day ... it is your friend's car and his/her decision. So it is with the President ... he can propose, ask, beg, threaten, or bargain with republicans and this band of Democrats (that have suddenly found the need to express their independentness); but at the end of the day, the votes are theirs, and theirs alone.

That is not even to mention the change in the way politicians of today handle themselves ... In the past, a President could call a legislator into his office a give him/her the "LJB Treatment" (or, the "Reid treatment", as a recent example ... remember the dam project Reid gave McConnell in exchange for the debt ceiling vote?). That was the past, now before the meeting was over ... aides (on both sides) would have tweeted about the meeting, and the "pressured" legislator would already have a press conference called to exclaim (read: whine about) how unfair it was for the President to pressure them.

And I won't even mention the sh!t-storm that would arise, in the above environment, should a Black President ... whom they have a reflective "that Black guy is not the boss of me" attitude with from the gate ... attempt to strong-arm them.