I'm with you, Dragonrider. If there's anyone who thinks the government doesn't work by unofficial influence-pressing and exerting their interests on others, that's someone who's not read enough history or watched government actually function. I hope we'll have less of that influence on the executive and legislative branches under Obama from lobbyists and special interests (who wrote the book on how that works). But influence-pressing is what politicians do--in all directions--to get things done and to get their own way. LBJ was a master at pressing and influencing. So were Kennedy and Clinton. Reagan and Bush II are said to have been very effective at picking up the phone and pressing a few key senators and congressman to get them to vote their way on things, promising various actions in return. Carter, Bush I and Ford were said to be less inclined to exert power this way.

I think this influence-pressing business is why matters will still be slow even under a same-party government. Obama will move from the left to the center, as we've already seen him touch on. All executives and leaders have to do this to be able to reach out to both extremes of those they work with, and in the new president's case, he wants to do that anyway because the last administration was so diametrically opposed to functioning in bipartisan fashion. When the center is the anchor point, that makes the extreme-leaners underneath more contentious. So there'll be a lot of pulling from those ends of the spectrum on legislation. It's going to be Obama's ability to influence those extreme factions that'll prevent filibusters and keep legislation moving. Be interesting to see if he can do that. They almost always give a new president a honeymoon where everyone cooperates and gets along nicely before they start fussing and holding out like three-year-olds. Tell you what, though, they'd better get their acts together to do something about this economy.