Pablo Martinez Monsivais/Associated Press

President Obama is obviously sick and tired of the widely peddled notion that the sequester and all other budget failures are ultimately his fault because he’s the president. His frustration made for a surprisingly lively news conference this morning, and gave the public a brief reminder that there are real limits to the power of the White House.

An Associated Press reporter said Mr. Obama’s criticism of Republicans for not averting the sequester with tax revenues made it sound as if he’s taking no responsibility for the effects of the cuts. He responded, with obvious annoyance, “What more do you think I should do?”

There isn’t a Republican in Washington — or even a casual viewer of cable news — who doesn’t know what Mr. Obama’s plan is, and what it has been ever since Republicans started the debt-ceiling crisis in 2011. He wants a mix of tax revenues and spending cuts to lower the deficit. He’s not pushing a plan of all tax hikes, and he’s not buying the Republican demand for all cuts. He’s the one willing to compromise.



He ran on this platform, he won re-election resoundingly, and he put forward a plan detailing specific revenues and cuts. It even proposes reductions in benefits to Social Security and health-entitlement recipients that this page has strongly criticized.

But it wasn’t enough to reach a deal, because Republicans won’t negotiate in earnest. They appear before TV cameras every day to complain about the president’s “refusal to lead,” and manage to spread the idea that he’s responsible for their stubbornness — even though he has offered to meet them halfway. One reporter even had the brilliant suggestion today that he should lock Congressional leaders in a room until they surrender and agree to a deal, as if this were a Hollywood version of a union negotiation. Perhaps he should also withhold food and water?

“I’m not a dictator, I’m the president,” he was forced to explain. “I know that this has been some of the conventional wisdom that’s been floating around Washington that somehow, even though most people agree that I’m being reasonable, that most people agree I’m presenting a fair deal, the fact that they don’t take it means that I should somehow, you know, do a Jedi mind-meld with these folks and convince them to do what’s right.”

There isn’t a “secret sauce,” he said, switching metaphors, to get Republicans to do the right thing when they refuse. The administration had hoped that the deep defense cuts in the sequester might get them to bend a little on taxes, but it didn’t work. As it turns out, the party’s attachment to military spending is a fading historical artifact. The party’s shrill new core cares only about cutting government, all government, at any cost.

So now the all-powerful president often portrayed on cable news is reduced to hoping that the sequester’s air-travel backups, or other inconveniences to the middle class, will pile up on Republicans and encourage them to reach a deal in the budget negotiations to come. Or that the party won’t want to be blamed for shutting down the government when current funding runs out on March 27.

The situation is a comedown for those who focus only on one branch of government, but that’s how the system was set up. The Constitution always envisioned Congress, not the president, as the real locus of government power, particularly with regard to the budget. For any voter who doesn’t like it, the entire House of Representatives will be up for election in just 20 months.