In “Bottoms Up, Lame Duck” , Columnist Maureen Dowd writes concerning a presidential news conference:
“ABC News’s Jonathan Karl asked [President Barack] Obama if he was already out of ‘juice’ to pass his agenda, citing the president’s inability to get a watered-down gun bill passed in the Senate, Congress swatting away Obama on the sequester cuts, and the recent passage of a cybersecurity bill in the House with 92 Democrats on board, despite a veto threat from the White House.”
“ ‘But, Jonathan,’ [Obama] lectured Karl, ‘you seem to suggest that somehow, these folks over there have no responsibilities and that my job is to somehow get them to behave. That’s their job. They are elected, members of Congress are elected in order to do what’s right for their constituencies and for the American people.’ ”
“He still thinks he’ll do his thing from the balcony and everyone else will follow along below. That’s not how it works.”
WATCHDOG: It is Dowd who doesn’t get it. President Obama recognizes that the only chance he has to bring about important change is to win both houses in the November, 2014 elections. He is laying that ground work.
