Obama charts his own course

One of the realities about President Obama is the degree to which he is a singular politician, a self-contained person who rose to power largely on the strength of his own intelligence, guile and self-confidence. He has always charted his own course - one that sometimes defied the customary or approved path - relying on himself and his own instincts rather than on others.

it explains, at least in part, the defiant and defensive performance he delivered Tuesday as he sought to justify the deal he had just cut with Republicans to extend all the Bush tax cuts for another two years. Democrats fear he will adopt the Clinton path of triangulation, but that may not be what the president has in mind.

Obama came out of Congress but has never been a creature of Congress. He was propelled to power on the backs of countless liberal activists, but he has always been wary of attaching himself to any wing or faction of the party. As a rising candidate, he was neither overly cozy with organized labor nor too friendly with the centrists in the Democratic Leadership Council.

Contrary to popular mythology, Obama is not a part and product of the Chicago machine, though he has never really fought the machine. Nor did he prepare for his presidential campaign - as Bill Clinton did - by developing a huge network of powerful Democratic allies in Washington or across the country. Many of them Obama barely knew until he was already on his way to victory.

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