A common criticism of President Obama lately has been that he let Congress take the lead in crafting the details of health care reform. This is assumed to be a bad thing. It is not.
First, we need to keep in mind that Obama grew up during the era that many academics call "The Imperial Presidency." Those of us who were children when LBJ was in office and teens when Nixon resigned tend to have an instinctual reluctance to trust centralized authority.
Second, as a President with legislative experience, Obama has respect for the legislative process of bargaining and compromise. This is reinforced by his organizational ideology, one that emphasizes collaboration, even with opposing sides (refer to the work of John Kretzmann and Jon McNight on post-Alinsky organizing that emphasizes "asset-based" community development).
Third, as a constitutional scholar, Obama does appear to respect the original design of our Constitution, which is premised on the belief that equilibrium is achieved in the Newtonian laws of political physics: power and authority is shared by competing political institutions and forces.
This guy is a throwback to the modern era of presidents, and so he wants the legislature to be the arena where he works. The White House is indeed working to influence health care, but in an inside way consistent with the approach of presidents in the FDR-Johnson era. This is a good thing, not a bad one.
One last connection: taking this approach is tapping into the idea that the more minds and interests that go into a decision, the better the result, Read James Surowicki's The Wisdom of Crowds if you want a clearer understanding of how collective decisions are almost always more successful than ones made by individuals or small groups of experts...
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