Everybody knows that campaigning and governing are different.  Campaigning is about selling the candidate, and selling his policies.  It’s about altering the policies, as need be, to fit the mood of the electorate.  It’s about promising something for everyone, and currying favor with enough special interest groups to win at the polls.  And, it’s about fighting – with the other candidates in the race, with the incumbent, with the press, etc.

Governing, on the other hand, is about the universe of the possible. In order to govern and lead, the President must identify the finite number of key issues that are critical to the nation’s safety, stability and growth.  After identifying the critical issues, governance is about finding the politically feasible ways to address those issues.  The President must form alliances with Congress, with the Judiciary, and with the American people to expand the universe of the possible, and to get things done.

The great dysfunction of the Obama presidency is that this distinction between campaigning and governing appears not to have hit home.  For the White House, it’s “all campaigning, all the time”.  And for Team Obama, campaigning means fighting.

Obama talks constantly of fighting.  In recent weeks, he has talked about fighting with banks to implement new taxes and bring about additional regulation.  He talks in televised interviews about fighting to bring about change the country needs.  In response to the recent Supreme Court decision on campaign financing, his Organizing for America team sent out an email promising to fight the Court’s decision with additional legislation.  (The spectacle of a President fighting openly with the Supreme Court in this way is actually embarrassing.)  Recent finger pointing at Congress means that Obama is now picking a fight with Capitol Hill.  Obama is even fighting with voters, trying to force through health care legislation that is deeply unpopular. 

And he wonders why he has accomplished essentially nothing during his first year in office.

Dr. Laura Niklason is a physician and professor of Anesthesia and Biomedical Engineering at Yale University.