This is why you need experience to be President.

WASHINGTON — Tempers were fraying in the White House Cabinet Room as night turned into morning on Jan. 15. President Obama had been cloistered nearly all day with House and Senate Democrats, playing “marriage counselor,” an aide said, as he coaxed, cajoled and prodded them on a health care overhaul.

As the clock neared 1 a.m., the two sides were at an impasse. Mr. Obama stood up.

“ ‘See what you guys can figure out,’ ” one participant remembers him saying, adding that the failed effort left the president mad. Another Democrat who was there, Representative Henry A. Waxman of California, said Mr. Obama left “frustrated that while he was putting out ways to bridge the problem, we hadn’t reached a conclusion.”

Ever since his days as a young community organizer in Chicago, Mr. Obama has held fast to the belief that by listening carefully and appealing to reason he can bring people together to get results, an approach that in Washington has often come up short.

We could have seen this coming, in fact many of us did when during the Primary debates, Obama affirmed that he would gladly sit down with implacable enemies of the U.S. to 'discuss' the situation, no doubt confident that brutal, mass-murdering dictators were essentially 'reasonable' people simply blinded by their own bitter-clinging stupidity.

The man is a moron.

It plainly obvious why he can't seem to make a deal--obvious to everyone but himself. Oh, perhaps we should put David Axelrod into that particular mix.

“I would love to live in a world where the president could snap his fingers or even twist arms and make change happen, but in this great democracy of ours, that’s not the way it is.”

...as he raised his outstretched arm and clicked his boot heels together.

Barry, Barry, Barry.

People are indeed 'reasonable'. In fact in my experience people are absolute slaves to reason. Its just not always easy understanding what the reasons are. If Obama was really as good a 'listener' as is claimed, he might understand that people lie, and they lie to themselves as much or more than anyone else. In my view, an effective conversation is something that comes in its own time, and that you prepare for--sometimes for a very long time. You can't force these things to suit your own time-table, unless of course you have the dictatorial powers whose absence David Axelrod laments.

I have a tendency to see things as obvious, which others inform me are not really that clear for other people, but it seems to me that talking to Waxman or Olympia Snowe is a huge waste of time. These people have no real power to make decisions--they live in fear of how it will play during their next election campaign, or how many campaign contributions its going to cost them. Any good salesman knows that step one in making a sale is getting to the person who can actually say yes, and appealing to their peculiar brand of reason.

When I was a young man, I made a sale to a regionally well-known company in Pennsylvania. I was dealing with the President of the company--its said so right on his card. I got the purchase order, the deposit, shipped the equipment and arranged for installation. Then something unexpected happened--a man who I had never met, walked into the room and said, "what the hell is going on here?" The equipment was packed up, shipped back, P.O rescinded and deposit returned--all because I didn't know who this man was and that I needed to get his OK on the deal. He was the owner, and he had been on vacation.

The 'owners' that Obama has to convince, are back from vacation, and they are pissed.