Does Obama need to toughen up?

IMO Barack Obama is an amazing person. Among other things, he is very well educated and an international and multi-culti experience unparalleled by any other US President, rare even among past and present country leaders around the world.

He is part of a generation and type of leaders who can inspire and communicate and seek consensus rather than play political hardball. Yet, 11 months after his inauguration with a clear mandate by the US voters for Change, in a phase of US and world challenges that are, each, a Gordian Cord, and following the troubles of his healthcare reform in Congress, is it not maybe time for Obama to toughen up, politically, to get a significant US healthcare reform past the dire straits of especially the Senate and then finally move on to other crucial dossiers?

Recent polls indicate that his approval ratings have gone below 50%, but that is not IMO the point. The point is that the people voted him in with a clear mandate for Chnage and that a significant change in healthcare is a core part of that. Does he need to take his case to the people and use his skills and knowledge to convince them that real reform in healthcare is the only solution consistent with Change? And that all members of Congress, and especially the Senate, who are standing in the way are responsible for failing them, the people?

Is it Democrats who are willing to vote for healthcare reform who should be worrying about the re-election chances or Republicans who are standing in the way of Change?

Time for Obama to toughen up and call and spade a spade?

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PS. December 18, 2009 at 12:10 PM EST, Dan Pfeiffer, White House Communications Director, posted a post titled "The Time for Political Games is Over" at The White House Blog.

Inter alia he writes: "We've been talking about fixing the broken health care system in this country for decades. Each day reform was delayed this year, an average of 15,000 Americans lost insurance. Since the last time heath reform failed, premiums have doubled and national health care expenditures have nearly tripled."! Wow. And he asserts that "The time for political games is over. Now it’s time to act." I so agree with Dan Pfeiffer.