Obama can't talk his way out of a box

But no president can, really

In 2010, I wrote about a presidential leadership typology created by political scientist George C. Edwards. He proposed that presidents always intended to think strategically but the successful ones wound up being good at improvising, handling swerves, and being opportunistic. He calls these presidents "facilitators." Now, no one is going to run for president promising to facilitate this or that, or to make things up as she goes along, or to exploit moments of crises (political, domestic, international, economic.) And Edwards is concerned largely with the legislative arena. But his way of thinking makes a certain degree of sense. It is very difficult to change public opinion. And presidents who try to do so, or who spend time trying to change public opinion, are very rarely able to claim credit for whatever end goal they've aimed towards.

He finds that when FDR, LBJ, and Reagan worked their agenda through Congress, it was because a unique triple alignment of the stars existed: Congress had incentives to pass the presidents' legislation at the time, public opinion was broadly on their side, and the presidents exploited outside circumstances to bring a multiplier effect into the equation.

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Marc Ambinder

Marc Ambinder is TheWeek.com's editor-at-large. He is the author, with D.B. Grady, of The Command and Deep State: Inside the Government Secrecy Industry. Marc is also a contributing editor for The Atlantic and GQ. Formerly, he served as White House correspondent for National Journal, chief political consultant for CBS News, and politics editor at The Atlantic. Marc is a 2001 graduate of Harvard. He is married to Michael Park, a corporate strategy consultant, and lives in Los Angeles.