NYT's Maureen Dowd: Obama Hasn't Learned How to Govern

A president who has 90 percent of the public behind him, but can’t muster 60 votes in a Senate controlled by his own party still hasn’t learned to work the system, liberal columnist Maureen Dowd writes in Sunday’s New York Times.

“President Obama thinks he can use emotion to bring pressure on Congress. But that’s not how adults with power respond to things,” Dowd writes.

After the Newtown, Conn., school shootings Team Obama determined they had to do something to keep from looking unsympathetic, Dowd says. So they crafted a plan to push for new regulations, and Obama rallied for them in his State of the Union address.

“The families of Newtown deserve a vote,” Obama said to thunderous applause. But Dowd complains that the president then backed off, admitted his chances were slim and didn’t work hard enough to press senators to vote with him.

“There were ways to get to 60 votes,” Dowd writes. “The White House just had to scratch it out with a real strategy and a never-let-go attitude.”