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On April 5, 2011, President Obama observed, “We’re going to have some very tough negotiations. And there are going to be, I think, very sharply contrasting visions in terms of where we should move the country. That’s a legitimate debate to have.” (1) He sounded very presidential in making the statement because he was taking the perspective of the nation as a whole. Furthermore, he used that vantage-point to try to keep negotiations from falling off the track. “If they can’t sort it out,” he said, “then I want them back here tomorrow.” (2) In short, he was presiding, rather than being partisan in taking a side, as he framed the situation facing the union. 

                                             Doug Mills, The New York Times                 

However, even as the president was referring to the two sides sorting the budget out as “they,” he himself was on one of the sides. That is, even though he “sought to position himself above the nitty-gritty haggling going on in Congress, which . . . limited his influence on the process” yet distanced him from any blame, his taking a side in the dispute subtly worked against his attempt to preside to hold the process as a whole together. (3) 

Michael Shear of The New York Times claims that Obama had "assumed the role of mediator in chief" in part to avoid a government shutdown. (4)  Attempting to distance himself from both sides, the president told reporters after a negotiation session on April 7th, “What I’ve said to the speaker and what I’ve said to Harry Reid is, because the machinery of the shutdown is necessarily starting to move, I expect an answer in the morning.” (5) Shear maintains that Obama's language here "suggests that he sees himself more as a bridge between the warring political parties than an active participant in the high-stakes discussions." (6) Crucially, the president's motivation may have enabled him to unwittingly compromise his own credibility, and therefore his situs from which to preside.

Shear suggests that Obama was taking on the mediator-in-chief role not only as a means to avoid a shutdown, but also, and perhaps more saliently, "to try to show that a government shutdown, if it happens, would be the result of a disagreement between the two sets of lawmakers — not a failure of his own. But there is a long-term goal as well: to convey to a restless public, and especially to moderate voters, that Mr. Obama is above the petty Washington bickering that many Americans say turns them off. That will be especially important for Mr. Obama as his re-election campaign tries to woo back independents who had become disillusioned with him." (7)  Jeff Zeleny reports that at times the president even referred "to Democrats in the third person, as though he is not the leader of the party. . . . 'Republicans and Democrats both start making a lot of speeches,' Mr. Obama said. 'Usually the Democrats blame the Republicans, the Republicans blame the Democrats.'" (8) "It remains an open question," Zeleny observes, "whether the distance he seeks to place between himself and Democrats on Capitol Hill — his own version of triangulation — will attract independent voters or antagonize members of his party." (9) Were the president's motivation more oriented all along to presiding so negotiations would have a buffer or safeguard of last resort, Obama would not have staked out a position in line with Harry Reid.

Aside from trying to distance himself from blame, a president alone can hold “the process” itself from falling off the ship of state by speaking to the encompassing interests of the country, thereby having credibility to both sides in holding them to the table. I contend that being a party to a dispute works against this presiding role that only a president can fulfill. In other words, a partisan president is an oxymoron even if the forced combination has become the bromidic default in practice. All too often, presidents have tried to have it both ways. In so doing, they have undercut their own presidencies and deprived the country of the function that only the president is in a position to accomplish. President Obama was not immune from the temptation.

Even though The New York Times reports that "Obama sought to present himself . . . as the man of reason and compromise, a disappointed father figure having to mediate a dispute between two squabbling siblings,"

Literally, to sit before that body or society over which one is presiding is the essential, or root, nature of a presidency. This function naturally involves protecting and enunciating the interests of the whole--hence choosing one's battles carefully and selectively. To be effective in a matter that suits the design of the office, a presider must ensure that his or her credibility is intact when it is needed in taking a stand on those few grave matters of crisis on which the system itself really does depend.  Picking fights on a daily basis wastes this sort of capital. Lest it be forgotten, less can be more.  In this case, the “less” is actually that which builds great legacies because it is in line with the nature of the office.

Click to listen to the author's podcast commentary on this essay.