Let's be honest about this. Barack Obama was never supposed to be a real president in any sense involving leadership or executive capacity. His only purpose was to read idiotic nonsense off a teleprompter and sign any legislation that Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid sent to his desk. Even the defining legislation of his presidency -- "Obamacare" -- should more appropriately be called "Pelosicare" because it was drafted by staffers and lobbyists affiliated with Democrats in Congress.
This is why Obama's presidency effectively ended after the 2010 election. Without a Democratic Congress to tell him what to do, he's resorted to doing what he does best when confronted with a situation that requires leadership, competence, or even a shred of intelligent thought: NOTHING.
Better to call it "Reidcare" -- because it was the Senate version of Obamacare that prevailed. "Pelosicare", the version that originated in the House, was single payer. When that version couldn't pass the Senate (thank you, Joe Lieberman), Harry Reid stripped oput all the content from a previous House bill and replaced it with what we now know as Obamacare.
I’d add that, upon assuming office Obama did an end run around the Departments and Agencies when it came to policy formulation by establishing all those czars. Policy formulation was pulled into the White House and the bureaucracy was reduced to a cheerleading and implementation role.
I’m guessing that, with the door to legislation now closed, there are binders full of EOs that are all ready to go. What does he really have to do other than sign them and attend meetings where he gets status updates on progress of implementation? He doesn’t need Congressional outreach, etc for that, just a close group of trusted advisors/enforcers (Val Jarrett) to make sure the trains are running on time.
And accept a Nobel Peace prize for doing nothing.