DougJ at Balloon Juice makes an interesting point about spending:
Big domestic programs (other than tax cuts) are nearly impossible [to pass]. The Bush people went 0-for-2 on big domestic proposals. It’s difficult to turn immigration reform or Social Security privatization into a war against the worst enemy ever.
For all the talk about how Congress did whatever Bush wanted—and they did—he didn’t pass much of import domestically, aside from the big tax cuts (something else that’s always easy to pass) and (EDIT) Medicare Part D, a big corporate give-away (these are also relatively easy to pass). The last president to have success with ambitious domestic policy initiatives was probably LBJ.
Castigating Obama for not being another LBJ seems a little unfair to me.
He's right about the relative ease of passage for different types of programs. And he's not wrong that Barack Obama just isn't going to have the arm-twisting capabilities of Lyndon Johnson.
But if Obama could look at the history and see that that kind of arm-twisting is what it took to get big, good domestic legislation passed, shouldn't he at least try? Is his personal style of politics that much more important to him than the substance of getting people in this country the health care they need?