From Ezra Klein in the New Yorker:
This, Edwards says, is the reality facing modern Presidents, and one they would do well to accommodate. “In a rational world, strategies for governing should match the opportunities to be exploited,” he writes. “Barack Obama is only the latest in a long line of presidents who have not been able to transform the political landscape through their efforts at persuasion. When he succeeded in achieving major change, it was by mobilizing those predisposed to support him and driving legislation through Congress on a party-line vote.”
That’s easier said than done. We don’t have a system of government set up for Presidents to drive legislation through Congress. Rather, we have a system that was designed to encourage division between the branches but to resist the formation of political parties. The parties formed anyway, and they now use the branches to compete with one another. Add in minority protections like the filibuster, and you have a system in which the job of the President is to persuade an opposition party that has both the incentive and the power to resist him.
Jim Cooper says, “We’ve effectively lost our Congress and gained a parliament.” He adds, “At least a Prime Minister is empowered to get things done,” but “we have the extreme polarization of a parliament, with party-line voting, without the empowered Prime Minister.” And you can’t solve that with a speech.
I have from time to time expressed my frustration with Obama for not using his bully pulpit to at least try to change the rules of the Beltway game, but I've also suspected that we're at a point in which rhetoric or any efforts to persuade in the ordinary sense can make no difference.
Klein's article goes further to argue that there's strong evidence to suggest that a president's using the bully pulpit probably makes things worse, because it forces the opposition to publicly oppose him. Deals can be made when they are out of the public spotlight, but are much harder when they are exposed to the media scrutiny that forces legislators into their partisan silos.
The bully pulpit is meant to persuade the public, not the insiders, but public opinion doesn't matter except on election day, and in between elections it's an inside game where the players are legislators who are unpersuadeable once their party's agenda is set. After that it's not about what's best for the country, it's about falling into line, making sure the other guy doesn't win, and protecting yourself from the abuse that will be heaped upon you by FOX and talk radio.