Based on observation, our President categorizes people into two groups:
1. Peers to be treated with great respect, such as bankers and other people of great wealth, and other US politicians save for non-authoritarian Democrats. These are people he can work with to solve problems, there is give and take.
2. The governed, whose opinions are of no consequence. This group includes the press, leaders of countries in the Southern Hemisphere, and the rest of us. Like sometimes-unruly children, we must be taught that he is the daddy, and he will have his way.
Witness Obama's struggle to cut Social Security, which he began a month before taking office, and continues to this day. No matter how hated this effort is by the 99%, no matter how obvious it's become that his proposals will cause some of our aged to go hungry, he continues to cook Social Security's books to claim that it needs "reforms".
Witness the freezing out, even the arrest, of those who wanted a workable solution for health insurance reform.
Witness the war of intimidation against the press.
Witness the widely-hated Trans-Pacific Partnership, a treaty so wretched and destructive that Elizabeth Warren tells us it has to be kept secret or else people would demand that negotiations cease.
Now witness Obama's pledge to "reform" Spy On Everyone, the program he's steadfastly defended. It is a program run for group 1, against group 2. The "reform", by his own admission, will only be around the program's PR, and Clapper will be in charge of it. Is this any different than putting Simpson and Bowles in charge of proposing "reforms" for Social Security? The outcome is decided, and it's not one that most Americans want.
In fact, I can't think of a single issue regarding us little people that Obama's ever changed his mind on, ever stopped fighting to get his way on. His rigidity regarding us children seems absolute.
So I suppose that we can hoot and holler, but unless we pry the Presidents hands off of his security apparatus' levers with a crowbar, ain't nothing changing until 1/20/2017. And if, God help us, a Republican takes the oath of office that day, he or she will have some pretty awful precedents involving suppression of civil liberties and the press that will allow for some incredible mischief.