Guest post by Walter Rhett

The “cognitive dissonance” in arguing that leaders lead, President Obama needs to be assertive, cut deals, engage individual Congress members is in the article of faith that we can return to the Lyndon Johnson model. No more then the Wing T or two-hand set shot will win football or basketball games!

The error is contemporizing the past. It is a big part of the GOP ideology, and it is also the denial and hope of the liberal/left/Democrats who long for a return to era of success. Yet that success followed a long trail of citizen direct action–including street riots at the 1968 Chicago convention and physical confrontations on the convention floor.

Later, Clinton lost on welfare and healthcare. The GOP Senate led by Bob Dole passed the King Holiday bill. The senate, this December (2012) rebuked Dole, a favored elder, a wounded WWII veteran, a practitioner of Lyndon’s arts, its leader and a GOP Presidential candidate–when it voted down a treaty Dole worked the halls to support–over the farfetched idea of a conspiracy of UN hegemony over America supposedly embedded in a reporting function in the millennium goals of UN Agenda 21!

So Barack can’t lead? Who can? How many GOP senators resigned or lost primaries because they couldn’t mitigate their own voters attitudes and demands, or work effectively within their caucus? The biggest fail was Texas, where the backroom power brokers, including Rick Perry, utterly lost to Ted Cruz! (Who received fewer Latino votes than John Cornyn!).

Three times, Boehner, the ultimate old-style, power broker cut from Lyndon’s jib (he re-assigned several committee chairs, works the lobbyists, hands out favors) had to bring bills to the floor that his caucus didn’t back! With a “minority of the majority,” he passed VAWA, Sandy relief, and Fiscal Cliff legislation only with Democrat support!

Beyond current dysfunction, do we want the President to lead a return to the era of the backroom? I push for taking away more perks, like tax credits.