There’s been much written of late (for example here by Mike Tomasky and here by Nate Silver) arguing that Obama has been unable to adopt the mantle of a transformational leader. As Tomasky puts it well, transformational leaders “fight and draw lines in the sand.” And as David Frum argues, “he’s not standing up. He’s rolling over. Or being rolled.” The on-going saga of how the president will convince a Republican House and a Democratic Senate to vote for a $4 trillion grand bargain to raise the debt ceiling provides ammunition for the president’s critics who wish that he would draw that line in the sand. (“Eat our peas” might not be sufficient.)
Monkey Cage readers might be interested in a recent piece for Brookings that I wrote with Tom Mann that takes on the question of the potential for better leaders to make a difference. We explore a range of forces that constrain congressional and presidential leaders, and suggest that transformational leadership is likely conditional on the electoral and institutional contexts in which presidents must operate. While recognizing the difficulty of testing for leadership effects, we conclude that even if Obama wanted to draw a line in the sand, it would likely be quickly washed away.