Bipartisan gun control amendment fails in the Senate

[muon2]

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/21/opinion/sunday/dowd-president-obama-is-no-bully-in-the-pulpit.html?_r=0

Maureen Dowd has some rather scathing statements from the left for the President. Trouble is, I'm not entirely sure what he could have done at this point. Time and again, he has been consistently roadblocked by Congress -- I'm not sure the man has any desire to even deal with them at all anymore.

I think this a really good analysis by Dowd. She does point out many specific examples that could have been done, but were missed here. Part of this goes to Obama's rise from minority party State Senator, two years in the majority but not in a key leadership post, then junior US Senator. The task of vote counting and arm twisting isn't in his resume, yet all successful executives need the skill at times. The movie Lincoln illustrates the skill at work.

[muon2]

Good point. Obama's blame in this measure's defeat is clearly second only to Congressional Democrats.

Huh?  I never blamed Obama for this measure's defeat, if that's what you're getting at.  I'm not blaming congressional Democrats in general, either.  I'm blaming certain Democrats for not helping pass this measure in spite of the fact that an overwhelming majority of the population agrees with them on it.  It still wouldn't have been enough to overcome the filibuster, but the fact that there was bipartisan opposition to the bill doesn't help the cause.  It was the same argument the Republicans used against the health care bill.

No, I was referring to muon's post that more thn implied obama's lack of lbj syle vote counting skills was a mjor contributor to the measure's defeat.

If a president (or governor, or mayor) expects a signature issue to pass over strong objections, they have to be willing to use their office to sway the necessary votes. That's not to say that leadership doesn't have office to use in a similar fashion, they do. I read Dowd as suggesting my first statement has bearing on the issue. I agree and point out that the President lacked experience on either executive or leadership posts, and that could explain the President's behavior as seen by Dowd.

I think to your point, the Senate leadership does offer another means to push for votes. But if in fact the executive was not also pushing effectively, it can only reduce the potential that one would get from both Senate leadership and the President working in concert.