Having already deployed the heavy weapons from the presidential arsenal, including a national address on Monday night and a veto threat, Mr. Obama is in danger of seeming a spectator at one of the most critical moments of his presidency. Having been unable to get the grand bargain he wanted — a debt limit increase and up to $4 trillion in debt-reduction through spending cuts and taxes — Mr. Obama’s challenge now is to reassert himself in a way that produces the next-best outcome, or at least one that does no harm to his re-election hopes…
No measure can pass without the president’s signature, so Mr. Obama is far from irrelevant. But his limited ability in a divided government to affect the legislation and his inability before now to shape a compromise with House Republicans, many of them dedicated to never compromising with him, is proving the most significant test to date of his campaign promise to bridge the two parties and make Washington work…
“I don’t think a president is ever completely helpless, but having said that, my interpretation of the nationally televised address that he gave was that he had no arrows left in his quiver,” said Bill Galston, a former Clinton administration official and now a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, a research organization. “If he’d had another card to play, that was surely the time to play it. He’s the ultimate decider but, on the other hand, I think his capacity to shape what gets to his desk has been substantially reduced” as Republicans stand their ground, Mr. Galston said. Even Mr. Boehner has found it hard this week to get an agreement with the Republicans he ostensibly leads, he added.
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