CAN YOU DECLINE FROM INSIGNIFICANCE?:

Under Obama, the presidency has been in decline. His use of the budget as a ploy against Republicans is an example of this. The biggest domestic issue is the looming fiscal crisis, but Obama has addressed it only rhetorically. Instead he's used the budget largely as a political tool that cheapened the presidency.

Other presidents have done this, but far less crassly or brazenly. At least they presented their budgets on time, as required by law. Obama was two months late. He erased one of Washington's oldest adages: The president proposes, Congress disposes. By last week, both the Senate and House had already passed budget resolutions. 

Obama's tardiness touches on another aspect of presidential decline: the loss of influence. By long tradition, any release of the budget produced by the White House was a major event. True, the impact of the president's budget has waned in recent years. Obama has made it an afterthought.

On Capitol Hill today, Obama has scarcely any clout at all. One reason: He acts as if spending time with members of Congress, even Democrats, is an unpleasant chore. Another reason: Having deferred to Democrats in his first term, he finds it difficult to pull rank on them in his second. And having ignored or alienated Republicans, he isn't likely to achieve much by courting them over dinner in recent weeks.

Immigration and gun control are the dominant issues in Congress at the moment, and Obama is a major player on neither of them. The "gang of eight"--four Democrats, four Republicans--is the driving force on immigration in the Senate. Obama is no force at all.

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