OBAMA DEBUNKS HIS OWN BI-PARTISAN MYTH

Straight from the big-eared horse's mouth. Obama admits he has no power of persuasion. In the context of passing the Bailout Bill, the following dialog occurred:

Berman: Are you calling members today?

Obama: I will be calling members and getting their ideas. The main thing is to just move away from this hyper-political environment and recognize the house is on fire, lets put the fire out first and we can figure out what caused it.

Berman: You're a very persuasive man, you have a certain amount of influence with your own party, could you have done more, should you have done more, before the House vote yesterday to lobby for votes?

Obama: Oh, absolutely, not because -- if you think about it, there was a deal struck between [House Speaker] Nancy Pelosi and Republican [Minority House] leader [John] Boehner.

The Democrats were supposed to get 120 votes, they got 140 so there was no sense on the Democratic side that we weren't following through on our commitments and apparently there were some problems on that side. I don't think me calling House Republican members would have been that helpful, I tend not to be that persuasive on that side of the aisle.