On a recent episode of Meet the Press, President Obama presented his ideas for his second term and a panel of “experts” gave their opinion on the president.  I thought a few of their observations were right on target.  First, they agreed that President Obama cannot just blame Congress for not meeting him halfway on his proposals.  He was elected as a leader and a leader needs to demonstrate leadership traits, like integrity, empathy, and collaborating.  At its core leadership is about bring people together to accomplish a task.  Second, they all felt Obama was not worried by the nation going over the “Fiscal Cliff”.  Their assessment was Obama felt the Republicans would be harmed more than him and his fellow Democrats and as such he was willing to have the nation’s economy harmed by inaction.  Third, they brought up that he is not the communicator Clinton and Reagan were.   He has not effectively used public opinion to persuade politicians to his cause.  Without improvement on the three items, the commentators’ consensus was Obama’s second term would not be better than his first.

To further complicate matters, Congress has pushed important fiscal debates to late February/early March.  So, Obama has two months to improve on these “areas of development”.  My guess is no progress will be made and it will come down to the eleventh hour again.