President Obama must focus on goals and roles (Rep. Cynthia Lummis)

In the same interview, the president blamed the election results on his failure to properly convince the American people to buy into his agenda. He said, “It’s simply a matter of persuading people… and making an argument that people can understand.”

The problem isn’t your marketing, Mr. President, it is the reality of your policies.

The American people are smart; they understand your administration’s hi-jinks, and they have spoken. They are tired of the president’s ineffectual response — borrow, spend, tax, repeat — to the need for job creation and economic recovery. People all over the country want a new direction.

At the beginning of my political career, a wise man emphasized to me the importance of goals and roles. It might be worthwhile for the president to start there.

Americans’ priorities should have set the administration’s goals from the beginning. But instead of listening to the American people, the president and Washington Democrats focused on a tax and spend agenda, including TARP Vol. II, the stimulus trilogy, financial reform, the auto bailouts, cash for clunkers, unprecedented budget bloat, and ideologically-driven regulations.

Perhaps the two most dangerous measures to economic recovery pushed by Washington Democrats in this Congress were Obamacare and cap-and-trade. Both bills would fundamentally alter the American economy and significantly raise costs on all her citizens at a time when they’re financially struggling or unemployed.

Obamacare completely consumed Washington during the bill’s gestation leaving no air in the room for America’s priorities: employment and economic recovery.

Filled with behind-the-scenes prizes to seduce members of Congress wary of a “yes” vote, Obamacare’s “Cornhusker Kickback,” “Gator Aid,” and the “Louisiana Purchase” documented the lie of President Obama’s campaign promises of transparency and change as it comprised more old-fashioned backroom dealing.

With Obamacare now signed into law, it’s clear that many of the president’s promises aren’t holding water.

Among the president’s many guarantees was that the law would create jobs. Yet considering its massive new tax increases, the attendant uncertainty that Obamacare imposes on businesses, and hidden gems like the 1099 mandate, which places huge regulatory burdens on American small business owners, it’s clear that the new health care law is a job killer.

Just as the president’s goals were missing the mark by a country mile, his inflated view of the government’s role in our lives also sailed wide.

Much like Obamacare, cap-and-trade was a key Obama agenda item. It too is a budget buster. In fact, had it passed the Senate, cap-and-trade would have enacted the largest tax increase ever on American consumers of all income levels.

Now that cap-and-trade has stalled in Congress, the White House remains dead-set on regulating climate change by usurping the role of Congress to impose the president’s energy tax through the Environmental Protection Agency.

There is little doubt that a driving force behind this particular backdoor power grab is Carol Browner, President Obama’s un-elected, un-confirmed energy czar, one of forty-plus administration czars who have significant clout in forming, but no accountability for the consequences of, policy development.

It’s not your message, Mr. President. It’s your stop-at-nothing tactics and liberal, statist agenda that completely disregard the will and wishes of the American people.

I challenge President Obama to take a step back and reflect on how to govern in a new way this time by starting with the goals of the American people and a less burdensome role for the federal government.