How exactly is the President, who is head of the executive branch, going to fix the shenanigans going on in the legislative branch? Remember, the President doesn't make laws, he just enforces them (indirectly, through the Executive branch).

The real problem is that asking legislators to pass laws against their own self interest will never work.

I'm not sure what the solution is, but I'm pretty sure that no President can solve this problem. Blaming Obama because you don't understand high school level US history is pretty sad and doesn't give me a lot of confidence that the average voter will ever solve this problem, either.

The President certainly does have legislative power, some directly appointed and some not. He has the ability to veto bills. His VP--effectively an employee of his branch--has the ability to break ties in the Senate.

He is also the leader of his party. The President can direct the party to focus on a particular issue. Granted, this is more "soft" power than "hard" and there is only so much political capital a President can use. But, Obama in particular was elected with a large majority and is dealing with a Congress that has an approval rating of about 12 percent.

Futhermore, and more indirect, the President can elect Federal judges (not just Supreme Court justices, but Federal court and appellate court judges) that can "legislate from the bench." Effectively creating or destroying law that would prevent or enable, respectively, lawmakers to be a part of the Revolving Door[1] and to take money from lobbyists.

So, yes, most of the blame is on the legislators. But the President does not get a free pass.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolving_door_(politics)

A few things to keep in mind. First off, the President appoints judges and justices, but in no way does he guide them once they've been appointed. When appointing these positions, the best the President can do (keep in mind they have to be confirmed by 2/3s of the Senate) is to try to pick someone who will not undo years of jurisprudence the President agrees with. Once the position has been appointed, the President no longer has any control, and I believe the evidence says Presidential initiatives have both been supported and torn down at various times by the same judges and justices they've appointed.

Additionally, the President is the leader of his party,but there is a significantly greater power to being the leader of the Republican party than that of the Democratic party. This is because the Democratic party is much more fragmented and pulls from a much wider pool of underlying ideas than does the Republican one, so legislators representing their communities will be much tougher to keep on a coherent party message on a given issue. This is why, despite the strong hand he was dealt, the healthcare package passed by the Congress was lackluster at best: the Republican support was uniformly against it, while the Democratic support was extremely fragmented.

The President gets a free pass insofar as one has to look and see whether he's used the tools at his disposal to try to guide things in the right direction. You don't judge him by the result, but by whether he did what he could to influence it “correctly”, no matter what the result ultimately was. In the specific case of lobbying/corruption, mind you, I think (a) the evidence is unclear-to-negative and (b) Obama quickly decided to lose the focus on that in favor of trying to pull out of the recession as best he could and passing some of his legislative priorities. Whether the latter was a good decision or not is definitely up for debate. In a similar vein, the civil rights verbiage from the campaign for the most part went into a tailspin within a year of his taking office.

All great points and a finer tooth comb of nuances than my own analysis :)

It all goes to show that the system in Washington is a complex piece of machinery that requires a hacker mentality to succeed. I absolutely and truly believe that the same mentality that makes great programmers also make great political operatives. Regardless of political ideology, I think we, as a community, can get involved to a much larger degree to help influence and shape the world from the other side of the business/government divide.

Definitely true. I think, unfortunately, that it seems like the hacker mentality also lends itself more to cynicism, and the end result is that the hacker mentality lends itself more to a bit of fatalism when it comes to the government. That, combined with the (less pronounced, perhaps) tendency of the hacker mentality to dovetail with introversion, makes it harder for the hacker community to get involved in that sense.

That sounds cynical, of course. I do think we can get better :) And I think SOPA for one was a great example of the community going “hang on just a second here…”

First, the president's only legislative power is the power of the veto. He can't sign a bill that isn't presented to him, so if congress never presents a lobbying reform bill, he never gets to sign it.

Secondly, the purpose of the judicial system is not to "legislate from the bench." It is to strike down unconstitutional legislation. Despite what some recent conservative appointees have decided their role is. Off topic, but I do find it somewhat telling that the few federal judges who think it is their moral right to legislate from the bench usually are deeply involved in right wing religion and other forms of crazy.

Obama could threaten to veto SOPA, but there is little chance of that, specially after he picked as VP a guy we should thank for the DMCA and the PATRIOT Act.

(And after appointing a bunch of ex-MPAA/RIAA lawyers to run the DoJ.)

I agree with you. However, let's not let him off the hook for making ridiculous pronouncements and promises in the first place. Lots of people are sad he didn't "Change Washington"... but really they should never have believed him when he said he could/would. It's simply not under the President's control.

That said, let's be pissed. Not about Washington not being changed but about politicians (Obama included) making promises / claims that anyone with a mastery of HS US Gov't knows are complete hogwash.

I agree with what you said. We should not be mad that he hasn't done it, we should be mad when a presidential candidate makes the ridiculous claim that he could do anything in the first place.

I love candidates like Ron Paul, but even he is dishonest when he says he could "drain the swamp" and cut $1 trillion from the budget. No President has that kind of power.

Let's not forget to also be pissed at the "fourth estate" which offered not a single whit of criticism of Obama's ridiculous statements throughout the primary and presidential campaigns, and instead acted solely as his cheerleaders.

I'm a conservative but I've gotta point out here. The media's guilt on this issue extends beyond Obama, beyond liberals, beyond republicans, and beyond politics.

I think the media has made it clear in recent years they are in the business of entertainment. It's a new form of the stand up routine. The media is the new Laurel and Hardy. They stopped worrying about being "fair and balanced" a long time ago.

The media doesn't call out the asinine claims of various politicians because they need those people to watch their gladiators of choice. The people need to hear the rallying cry and get behind the gladiators that way the media can make money showing the people the images of their chosen gladiators.

It was one of his campaign promises:

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/obameter/pr...

I'm sorry, did you mean to say "How's that hopey, changey stuff working out?"