What Frustrates Me Most About Barack Obama?

He accepts the playing field that his opponents define for him, by acceding to their concept of political reality.

Here's one example.

Here's another.

Maybe mortgage forgiveness and carbon taxation aren't political reality now.  But a President has a platform that no one else has to argue for reshaping that reality.  Not only does he (and one day, she) have the powers conferred in the office itself, by the Constitution, past Congresses and the courts, but also the power conferred by a national voter base and followed by the national media.

Leadership isn't about doing the possible.  It is about stretching the boundaries of what is possible.  Obama's signature accomplishment, health care reform, stands on the foundation of many failed attempts by Democrats that came before him, from Harry Truman to Hillary Clinton.  Putting it another way, he didn't build it all by himself.  Now that he has the political capital that comes with a second term and the freedom that comes (supposedly) with being term-limited, he owes it to the next generation of Democrats and the American people to get out of his comfort zone, and ours, to push the nation forward as he has says he wants to do.