Remnick: No. I think dealing with the US Senate is very different from dealing with the electorate. America is now extremely fractious and dominated by the loudest voices on cable television and the Internet and Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck and all this stuff. And Obama somehow thinks he can overcome it because he is such a conciliatory character.

SPIEGEL: But he can’t.

Remnick: He’s wrong. That is his problem. He can’t. Even a president cannot in a moment’s time utterly transform the political and media culture that he’s given.