The Washington Post’s Chris Cillizza merits mention on consecutive days:

Being president is the most powerful job in the world. At which you will almost certainly fail.

Why? For lots of reasons up to and including:

* The decline of the bully pulpit as a persuasion mechanism

* The deep partisanship present not only in Congress but also in the electorate more broadly

* The splintering of the mainstream media/the rise of social media.

Consider the last three presidents — two Democrats, one Republican — who have had to deal with those three factors in varying degrees. (Can you imagine what Bill Clinton’s presidency would have been like if Twitter existed?) …

The arc of Clinton’s presidency is the most different from the other two but that’s largely because of the attempt to impeach him, a move that fundamentally re-shaped his presidency.  The similarities between the Bush presidency and Obama’s tenure are striking in that the trends — rank partisanship, the decline of the bully pulpit — that Clinton had only to grapple with toward the end of his time in office have accelerated exponentially over the past 14 years. And the result has been the same in both cases: A president who a majority of the country disapproves of and a country even more split along ideological lines on, well, everything. …

[Obama] has struggled to contain self-inflicted wounds — particularly in his second term — ranging from the IRS scandal to the problems of vets receiving adequate and timely care. His relations with Congress — Democrats included — have never been warm and, as a result, his ability to ask for the benefit of the doubt is non-existent. His underestimation of just how polarized the country and the Congress have become was entirely avoidable; senior members of his inner circle — many of whom came directly from the campaign(s) — were all too aware of that reality. His belief in his own powers of persuasion — to the Congress and the country — were also heavily overrated.

But, it’s hard to see how Obama could be considered “successful” even if he hadn’t made the various mistakes — in governance and the politics of politics — that he did.  His presidency began at a time not only of unprecedented polarization in Congress and the country but also at a moment in which a president’s ability to bend the country to his will had reached a low ebb.

Cillizza quotes Ronald Brownstein of National Journal:

Each initially sought the White House promising to bridge the nation’s widening partisan divide. Clinton pledged to transcend “brain-dead policies in both parties” with his “New Democrat” agenda. Bush declared himself a “compassionate conservative” who would govern as “a uniter, not a divider.” Obama emerged with his stirring 2004 Democratic convention speech, evoking the shared aspirations of red and blue America, and took office embodying convergence andBut by this point in their respective second terms, each man faced the stark reality that the country was more divided than it was when he took office. In 1996 and 1997, Clinton reached Washington’s most consequential bipartisan agreements (particularly to reform welfare and balance the budget) since the early 1970s. But by 1998, House Republicans were moving inexorably toward their vote to impeach him.

Bush enjoyed some bipartisan first-term successes, particularly on education reform. But by this point in his second term, he was fighting with Democrats over the Iraq War and restructuring Social Security, and with House Republicans over reforming immigration. Obama, from his first weeks, has faced unremitting Republican opposition. And, as his shift toward unilateral executive action underscores, he’s increasingly thrown up his hands at the possibility of finding any common ground with the GOP.

Clinton pursued agreements across party lines more consistently than either Bush or Obama. But this persistent polarization likely owes less to the three men’s specific choices than to structural forces that are increasingly preventing any leader, no matter how well-intentioned, from functioning as more than “the president of half of America.”

That phrase, coined by Will Marshall, president of the centrist Progressive Policy Institute, aptly describes an environment in which presidents now find it almost impossible to sustain public or legislative support beyond their core coalition.

That dynamic is partly explained by institutional changes that have transformed Congress into a quasi-parliamentary institution and hindered presidents from building productive partnerships with the opposite party.

The move by both parties to rely less on seniority and more on votes by their full membership when allocating coveted committee chairmanships has increased pressure on legislators to toe the party line, which almost always discourages cooperation with the other side. The rise of national fundraising networks to bankroll more primary challenges has reinforced that effect: Legislators today are denied renomination for compromising too much, not too little. And the roar of overtly liberal and conservative media has provided each party’s ideological vanguard another powerful cudgel against legislators tempted to stray.

But these changes only manifest a deeper divide in the public itself. In elections up and down the ballot, each party now relies on voter coalitions that overlap remarkably little with each other in their demography, geography—or priorities. Democrats depend on a coalition that is younger, racially diverse, more secular, and heavily urbanized. Republicans mobilize a mirror-image coalition that is older, more religiously devout, largely nonurban, and preponderantly white. Satisfying one coalition without alienating the other has become daunting, and many activists, especially in the GOP, now see any attempt at compromise between them as capitulation.

Neither Cillizza nor Brownstein correctly identifies the difference between Clinton and Obama. Perhaps because he was a governor, or perhaps because that was just his personality, Clinton wanted to get things done, and if that meant dealing with the other side, that’s what it took. Obama, perhaps the most arrogant president in our history, doesn’t care about opinions different from his own, apparently even within his own party. (For one thing, Obama, who thinks he’s the smartest person in any room he’s in, failed to learn the lesson of Clinton’s first two years as president, the result of which ushered in six years of Republican control of Congress.)

There is, however, an instructive past example. Remember Jimmy Carter and his “malaise” speech (which didn’t actually include the word “malaise” in it)?

Steven Hayward wrote The Age of Reagan, and describes the run-up to the 1980 presidential election:

The popular historian Barbara Tuchman expressed the thinking of the intellectual elite: “The job of President is too difficult for any single person because of the complexity of the problems and the size of government. Maybe some form of plural executive is needed, such as they have in Switzerland.” U.S. News and World Report wondered: “Perhaps the burdens have become so great that, over time, no President will be judged adequate in the eyes of most voters.”

Columnist Joseph Kraft wrote on election eve: “As the country goes to the polls in the 47th national election, the Presidency as an institution is in trouble. It has become, as Vice President Mondale said in a recent interview, the ‘fire hydrant of the nation.’ ” Newsweek echoed this sentiment: “The Presidency has in some measure defeated the last five men who have held it—and has persuaded some of the people who served them that it is in danger of becoming a game nobody can win. . . . The job as now constituted is or is becoming impossible, no matter who holds it.”

Funny how no one was saying that after the Ronald Reagan presidency. On the other hand, as pointed out on Facebook:

I would disagree with the premise. The presidency is too big a job for the people who are willing to run for the job. Maybe Mitt Romney was the only one with management experience and might have done a decent job, but look at everyone else who ran… some who have limited experience, some who have no relevant experience, and some morons. Where are the really good people? They don’t want to run… its too cruel and nasty and you have to sell your soul to raise money.

 James Taranto remains unconvinced:

A polarized electorate means that a president’s approval rating has a floor (in Obama’s case a bit below 40%) as well as a ceiling. But in any case, if contemporaneous approval ratings were the measure of presidential success, Truman would be considered a failure and Harding would be on Mount Rushmore.

The causal factors Cillizza identifies are considerably less novel than he seems to realize. True, the country is ideologically polarized now when compared with recent decades. But it isn’t more polarized than ever. In the 1860s it actually split in two and fought a civil war–and the president at the time is now regarded as one of the greatest (and his predecessor as one of the worst).

The “mainstream media,” which Cillizza sees in decline, is a relatively recent phenomenon. In past eras, the press was far more partisan than in the decades after World War II. And while it’s true that what we call “social media” are new, innovations in communication are a centuries-old story. “Can you imagine what Bill Clinton’s presidency would have been like if Twitter existed?” Cillizza asks breathlessly. Well, can you imagine what Lincoln’s presidency would have been like if radio existed? How about FDR’s and television, or Reagan’s and the World Wide Web?

Cillizza’s claims about these trends are purely impressionistic, with no data to back up his assertions. That in itself isn’t necessarily a flaw, but his statements are so imprecise as to be laughable, and ultimately self-contradictory. He writes: “The similarities between the Bush presidency and Obama’s tenure are striking in that the trends–rank partisanship, the decline of the bully pulpit–that Clinton had only to grapple with toward the end of his time in office have accelerated exponentially over the past 14 years.”

If something is accelerating exponentially, that means not just that its speed is increasing, but that the rate at which its speed is increasing is increasing. In physics, this is called “jerk.” (Think of the way a car jerks when you slam on the gas.) Cillizza seems to be using “exponentially” to mean something like “a lot.”

Later, however, he informs us that the Obama presidency “began at a time not only of unprecedented polarization in Congress and the country but also at a moment in which a president’s ability to bend the country to his will had reached a low ebb.” Assuming “a president’s ability to bend the country to his will” means the same thing as “the bully pulpit,” Cillizza is claiming it reached a low ebb in 2009 and has continued declining exponentially ever since. That is quite simply nonsense.

Another question: How do you distinguish between a declining bully pulpit and an inept bully? Cillizza concedes that Obama’s “belief in his own powers of persuasion–to the Congress and the country–were [sic] also heavily overrated.” In the same paragraph, he faults Obama for “his underestimation of just how polarized the country and the Congress have become.” These both seem like shortcomings that would make Obama particularly ill-suited for leadership at this time.

It’s not impossible that George W. Bush had shortcomings, too. Thus it is preposterous to suggest that because two presidents have failed to live up to Cillizza’s standards of success (whatever they may be), it is impossible, or even “virtually” so, for anyone to do so.

Taranto quotes the New York Times’ Peter Baker, who wrote …

“A few months back, Mr. Obama argued that foreign relations is not a chess game,” Baker notes, adding: “But at times, it seems like three-dimensional chess.” Maybe the world would be a bit less disorderly if its lone superpower’s leader were not so simpleminded and soft-headed.