Obama can't distance self from D.C.'s ways

WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama promised to change Washington's ways. Yet he's as caught up in them as ever.

As the week began, Obama kicked off his re-election bid with a sunny video of people talking about their hopes and needs, the very image of life outside Washington politics.

By week's end, Obama was mired in budget negotiations, canceling trips and scrambling to stave off a government shutdown. It was the messy business of governing, and how it's going to be in this long campaign for incumbent Obama.

He got bogged down in legislative tactics in his first two years, even when he won fights on health care and other issues.

He can't avoid all that. In this test of leadership, the White House says Obama wrangled the budget compromise he wanted, spending cuts he supported without shelving his priorities or accepting unacceptable policy changes. His administration portrayed it as an example of bipartisan cooperation of the highest stakes.

Yet the government was on the brink of closing, and many people were wondering how that could happen, or why.

The showdown was a reminder that for all a president's powers, there's much beyond control. In this case, the new House Republican majority, led by Speaker John Boehner, seized on a must-pass budget bill to give voice to frustrated voters and tea party conservatives who demanded spending cuts.

Obama used a veto threat to make clear he would not accept the scope of GOP spending cuts. He said he would accept no more temporary extensions to keep the government running unless there was a broader deal in hand.

He said Americans didn't want games but results. The pragmatic approach is what White House strategists believe will bring back the election-turning independents to Obama.

Obama met with Boehner and Reid four times in the White House during the week. He went to the Philadelphia area to talk about energy.

But Washington sucked him back in. Friday, he canceled a trip to Indianapolis, scrapping attention he wanted to give to clean energy. Only when the standoff grew most dire did it end.

The budget mess showed how government isn't supposed to operate. No matter who's to blame, all will be, including a president running for election this time from inside Washington's ways.