The first job of a president is to establish strength — that he is a player to be reckoned with in the Washington power game.  Different presidents have done this in different ways.  Reagan’s handling of the air traffic controller strike is the most widely cited.  But at some point, the forces in this city decide a president can’t be pushed around — or can be.

Establishing strength is a communications challenge.  A president can use words.  He can use actions.  He can use both.  But the message must get through, or he will spend the rest of his administration playing catch up.

I do not feel Josh (in his posting below) is fair to President Obama, saying that a credibility problem has developed these past few weeks.  Yes, the President has been dodging one beanball after another, all, incredibly, thrown by his own team.  As one Washington insider told me today, the non-tax payment and other Cabinet-appointee surprises are probably the result of the President pushing so hard to get everyone in place so quickly.  The vetters didn’t have time to do their jobs properly.  But Mr. Obama enjoys considerable public goodwill that should keep these missteps from tarnishing him personally with the American people — and, to be clear, I believe he deserves that good will.

His standing in the halls of power is a different matter.  At least temporarily, he saved himself through his “we screwed up” assessment of the Cabinet-appointment debacles.  But his moves before making that statement looked uncertain.  He required too long to enforce his campaign rule about standards in government — and the halls of power note.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi as much as brushed off his initial post-partisan moves, including most importantly his remarks regarding taxes and spending in the stimulus bill.  In effect they told him — or appeared to tell him — to put away childish things… or go to his room and let the adults tend to their work.  Again, his response looked uncertain, exactly the wrong reaction at this impression-establishing stage of his tenure.

What can he do?  The President needs to have a fight — and he needs to win it.  In another administration, the obvious target would be the opposition party.  But the GOP is so weakened that beating them proves nothing.  Then, too, having run as a post partisan candidate, picking a partisan battle would undermine a central premiss of his victory. 

Incredibly, the President may find that he needs to pick a fight with the leaders of his own Congressional party — and do it soon.  For if he fails the strength test, it won’t be just the power jackals in this city that judge him weak.  It will our adversaries around the world.  And the consequences of them drawing that conclusion would be future tests of his strength in an entirely different arena, an arena not nearly so gentle as decidedly ungentle Washington.