As angry Democrats beat a path to television cameras Wednesday to denounce a White House tax compromise with Republicans, President Obama was making a show of being presidential....

"He is certainly straining to prove that he is tough," said Matt Mackowiak, a Republican strategist. "But there is a real threat to the White House now in that it is officially open season on the administration from the left and the right....

"The key risk in all of this for Obama is that he is not a naturally tough character. Scott Sandage, a professor of history at Carnegie Mellon University, said Obama's short stint in the Senate didn't give him a killer instinct for legislative wrangling.

"It often seems like when Obama recedes, he is trusting the process to drive itself -- and it just doesn't work that way," Sandage said.