By John Dickerson, Slate - March 8, 2013

President Obama is reaching out to Republicans. He had dinner with GOP senators Wednesday night and he had lunch with his former rival House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan Thursday afternoon. For the moment, Friday breakfast is open, but perhaps Dick Cheney is free. Next week he will visit Republicans in the House and Senate.

How a president works with Congress and persuades lawmakers to do his will is key to the office. With President Obama it is a particularly fascinating topic because he came to office promising a special magic in forging new arrangements with his opponents and he set high expectations about his power to motivate the public if those inside-Washington arrangements didn’t flower. Many of the evaluations of Obama’s leadership seem flawed though, because they focus on whether Obama has or has not reached out sufficiently to Republicans. Embedded in the question is the idea that if you reach out, you will be successful. Nothing could be less true. It isn’t that Obama is reaching out to Republicans for the first time. It’s just that his past attempts at doing so haven’t panned out. That’s because whether a president succeeds in working with his political opponents depends on the timing, the target, and topic, not whether he is trying at all.