Let me draw your attention to this Twitter exchange between the great Greg Sargent and all around "Why won't Obama lead?" expert Ron Fournier. The exchange begins in response to Fournier's article, from today (or any other day, really. He gets paid to write the same article several times a week).
What we learn from this exchange is that even Obama's ill-considered offers to compromise with Congressional Republicans, including but not limited to:
1. Proposing Romneycare instead of single-payer, and accepting a bill with no public option to please Olympia Snowe, who voted against the bill anyway.
2. Including Chained CPI in last year's formal budget proposal.
3. Offering a $4 trillion budget compromise with Speaker Boehner in 2011 that contained $3 trillion in proposed spending cuts.
Even though Obama wrote these things down on pieces of paper as offers, they don't count as offers because supposedly we shouldn't believe that an offer to compromise is really an offer to compromise. My question for Fournier was (and is), what could Obama possibly do? Ron rejected my idea of literally putting social security money, physical dollars, on a table.
If your entire gig is to write "Obama can't lead" columns every day to get as many Drudge hits as possible, you end up contorting yourself to demanding ridiculous things from the President that are not possible for any human being.
I should note that Fournier never answered the question as to what specifically, beyond offering several tangible compromises, should Obama do to signify his intention to compromise. Why won't Fournier lead????