Is there a displaced rational basis for blaming Obama?

Lots of smart political observers have been working hard in recent days to explain the odd phenomenon of centrist beltway types (Fournier, Ignatius, WaPo editorial staff) blaming Obama for not being able to induce Republicans to accept the kind of compromise or "balanced approach" to replacing the sequester that Obama has articulated ad infinitum and that the pundits in question themselves seek. That approach seeks a roughly equal mix of revenue increases (via tax loophole reduction) and spending cuts to replace the $1.2 trillion in automatic, across-the-board cuts in discretionary spending mandated by the sequester. Should such a balance be struck, spending cuts would still outnumber revenue hikes by about 2-to-1 in the sum of deficit reduction measures taken since 2011, not counting interest savings.

James Fallows calls the both-sides-are-to-blame schtick false equivalence.  Brendan Nyhan decries Green Lantern theory, the apparently ineradicable belief that the president can bend Congress to his will by force of rhetoric or personality or some more nebulous magical power.  Brian Beutler detects an Obama derangement syndrome -- a profound disappointment in Obama stemming from his apparent lack of power to stop the train wreck. Beutler does an excellent job demonstrating that David Ignatius in particular lambastes Obama for not making precisely the public argument in favor of a mix of tax hikes and spending cuts -- including cuts to Medicare and Social Security -- that Obama has been making nonstop for two years.

Fallows and others attribute this phenomenon to a rooted belief among establishment Beltway types that if compromise fails, both sides must be at fault. Beutler and Nyhan allude to misplaced faith -- disproved by political science research -- that the president can win a political fight by force of argument. Also, more generally, that presidential power should be able to overcome, because the president is...Father of us all?

I suspect that at least some of those who call on Obama to compromise more, or articulate better, or propose larger, "braver" entitlement cuts may be displacing anger over a disappointment in Obama that is more grounded in reality. Or perhaps I'm just speaking for myself here. Because I am angry at Obama.

You didn't gild that: TPC hands Obama a sword of unvarnished truth to wield against Romney's tax plans

As we await the next jobs day bomb this morning, my anxious and superstitious nature can't help but fear that the Obama campaign is like the Confederate army approaching Gettysburg -- at its high water mark in the wake of a raft of good polls, Romney twisting in the tax return wind, and the Tax Policy Center dissection of his gap-ridden and fraudulent "tax reform" plans.

But with that gesture to ward off nemesis, I can't help but delight, like (I assume) all who have been waiting for team Obama to pivot from Bain attacks to spotlighting tax cut/spending cut plans so extreme Americans don't believe Romney would actually propose them, in the way Obama has taken up the Tax Policy Center's analysis of Romney's tax plans and used it to tear into said plans.  As reported by the Times' Jackie Calmes, this Obama riff in Florida yesterday is scarlet sweetmeat to me:

A not-entirely-false equivalence of blame between the parties

Primed by James Fallows,  Greg Sargent, and Steve Benen, I'm on high alert for false equivalence -- reporter's language blaming government dysfunction equally on both parties, when it's Republicans who have taken the filibuster and other means of blocking legislative action to unprecedented extremes while opposing and demonizing a host of policies that they've historically supported.  So the radar started blinking when I came across this in a Financial Times editorial:

For the last three years, the country has been paralysed by a political gridlock that has put its future on the line. Both Republicans and Democrats are to blame – 

 But then, I was stopped by the actual "equivalence":

the Grand Old Party for its callous obstruction of all Democratic initiatives and President Barack Obama for his naïve neglect of the need for muscular leadership.