presidents are never what you hope they will be when you hope they will save the country (from it's own stupidity). Obama is a good president, but he is not going to save this country. no one person can save a country of 300 million people from themselves. only they can save themselves from themselves.
here's the bottom line about President Obama. he's not 007. he's not going to save us with some daring plan. he's one of the number guys. the desk jockeys. he's going to figure out the good that can be done without any big risks. so, the key to getting Obama to do things is to make it less risky for him to do it. take away the pressure. the worst thing to do is to put pressure on him because that just makes him more cautious.
practically speaking, we need to do 2 things to get Obama to do what we want (and what he wants too by the way). one, we need to get him majorities in congress again (the bluer the better). two, we need to support what he does right at least as much as we criticize what he does wrong. even if we have to over state how good what he does right is. the more we support him, the more he feels emboldened to act because he feels there is less risk.
look, if we had elected John Edwards, he would have been the 007 type who would have leaped off the cliff in a daring effort to do something and maybe he would succeed or maybe he would fall on his face in glorious defeat. the trouble with the 007 types is that they have a lot of baggage(ahem), they tend to cause a lot of collateral damage and they tend to fail more often than they succeed. in the modern world, with a global economy, failing can be incredibly disastrous.
look at the difference between the desk jockey Obama and the cocky gunslinger Bush. look at how Bush dealt with 9/11. he got distracted from Bin Ladin and overthrew Iraq. He actually thinks he saved the world from Saddam. the millions of lives and the trillions it cost are just how an action hero(wanna be) like Bush gets things done. but then there is Obama. he takes 2 and a half years to secretly find and kill Bin Ladin. over and done. no collateral damage. minimum cost. he pissed off the country that was harboring Bin Ladin, but it was a calculated risk that was worth the actual reward.
personally, i like the desk jockey President that Obama is. but yes, he does need a lot more support to do things than a lone wolf President does. but for me, that is not such a bad thing for a democracy. desk jockeys do their job. they don't fuck around. they may not be daring, but they are persistent. if you understand how to work with them instead of trying to berate them into turning into something they are not then you can have probably all of the successes that you want, but you just won't get them the same way you would with a 007 type.
think about President Obama in light of what I've just written. tell me that I am wrong. from Libya to ending DADT he has proven to be just what I am saying that he is. as someone of his same personality type, I can tell you that you can get him to do what you want if you do it the right way. this yelling at him is counter productive and just makes him think that: one, you don't appreciate all the hard work he does, so, fuck you; and two, that you need to calm down and figure out HOW to get what you want with a strategy that is NOT all or nothing.
yes, i know that saying that he thinks 'fuck you' makes you think 'fuck you' back to him, but that's the truth of it. he's not going to change. even if he could he's not going to do it while working at the hardest fucking job on the goddamn planet. he's going to keep doing what he knows works for him. which means that we have to be the one's who change(UPDATE: change our approach to getting him to do what we want not change who we are or what we believe in) to work with him. and i promise you that if we do that, together we can stop being pissed at each other(Obama and progressives) and start actually making some serious(if slightly slower and cautiously paced) progress.