Party has yet to win over American people, who now trust Obama marginally more than the GOP to deal with the country's problems, poll finds.

Right now, Congress is debating the best way to address tax relief for American families - a critical question as our country continues to recover from the recession. House Democrats are committed to getting the best possible deal for taxpayers and ensuring that taxes on working families don't go up on Jan. 1. But we also don't think it's fiscally responsible or fair to provide a tax-cut bonanza to super-rich estates.

Senate Republicans have made it clear they are willing to raise taxes this January on middle-class Americans unless they get tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires - despite the fact that a tax hike on the middle class could slow an already anemic economic recovery. Two weeks ago, in the face of overwhelming Republican opposition, the House passed legislation that would cut taxes for 98 percent of Americans while resetting rates for the top 2 percent to their levels under President Bill Clinton. Unfortunately, Democrats could not overcome Republican opposition in the Senate. We were at a stalemate.

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What can you do with a good ol' boy like Bubba? He only does what Bubba does. You probably shouldn't blame a distracted and overwhelmed Barack Obama, either. But that was a remarkable show the two presidents put on at the White House the other day.

No one remembered such a remarkable abdication of authority since Edward VIII, as goofy as Alfred E. Neuman, gave up a throne, several palaces and the royal grouse hunts to keep at his side "the woman I love." Or at least since Johnny Carson stepped aside for Jay Leno.

The president — the black one — seemed a little befuddled the other day when the other president — the white one — took control of an impromptu press conference at the White House. Mr. Obama got Bubba's endorsement of his tax compromise with the Republicans, but at considerable cost. The president was a man caught between two fires, one kindled by the pushy visitor in the briefing room and the other in the parlor, and a husband, even a presidential husband, knows how to calibrate the heat and knows better than to keep an impatient wife with a roast in the oven waiting when guests are arriving for supper. ...

The ineptitude of the Obama White House, revealed piece by piece over the months, was at last writ large enough for all to see. Could anyone imagine Harry Truman or Ronald Reagan allowing a former president to come into his house and take over a press conference? Could anyone imagine even Jimmy Carter deferring to such an interloper?

Good ol' boys, even former presidents, nearly always remember their Southern manners, and Bubba tried to give the illusion of nibbling at a slice of humble pie. "So, for whatever it's worth," he said, "that's what I think." Mr. Obama played the grateful inexperienced bridegroom inviting the ex-husband along to help on the honeymoon. "It's worth a lot," he said.

Then he said he had to leave for Michelle's party, and Bubba had the place for himself. "I feel awkward being here," he told the president, "and now you're going to leave me here all by myself." For the next half-hour he was the real president again, taking questions and dispensing wit and bonhomie. It was great theater, and a good time was had by all. But you can bet men are taking notes in Tehran and Pyongyang, Beijing and other capitals where the shrewd and unforgiving are forever looking for signs of weariness, weakness and impotence.

Obama has reinforced the notion, not by compromise but by relative silence, that we should fear changing tax rates in a time of economic crisis, even when economists of all stripes tell us that tax cuts for the wealthy offer extraordinary cost and zero benefit to the nation. He speaks most passionately not while lambasting a Republican Party that would drown the middle class on behalf of the wealthy, but when criticizing the left for not offering support at a time when he doesn't deserve it. Because he rightly expects the worst from the far right, he seems to have lost his sense of outrage toward them. The left, in turn, receives his overcharged and misplaced anger - suggesting an equivalence between the two when, in truth, there is none.