Obama's calls to lawmakers 'unheard of'

WASHINGTON -- Now that he has won the White House, President-elect Barack Obama is courting another set of voters: the 535 members of Congress who can make or break his presidency.

Obama, the first president elected directly from the legislative branch since John F. Kennedy, has packed his White House team with respected legislators and connected congressional staffers and has surprised lawmakers with phone calls — and not just to Democrats.

"This is unheard of," Rep. Ray LaHood, R-Ill., who is retiring after 14 years in Congress, said of Obama's calls to Republicans. "I don't know of another president-elect who has done this."

No president since Gerald Ford, a former House minority leader, has spent as much energy mastering Congress' 18th-century etiquette and byzantine turf wars as Obama, a former senator.

None since Franklin Roosevelt has needed the lawmakers' cooperation more urgently.

Faced with a shaky stock market, tight credit and rising unemployment rates, Obama is pushing members of the 111th Congress — which convenes two weeks before his Jan. 20 inauguration — to begin work on a massive economic stimulus package.

To make that happen, he needs to avoid the mistakes of his two Democratic predecessors, former presidents Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter, two Southern governors who saw their agendas bog down early despite comfortable Democratic majorities.

The Carter administration's chilly relations with Democratic leaders began when Hamilton Jordan, Carter's chief of staff, refused to give then-speaker of the House Tip O'Neill extra tickets for an inaugural gala.

Clinton's failure to consult Democratic heavyweights such as Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Rep. John Dingell on his health care proposal left them less willing to do the backroom dealing to push it through.

"Presidents sometimes feel things will happen just because they say so," said Leon Panetta, who served 24 years in the House before joining the Clinton White House as budget director and, later, chief of staff. "That's not how it works in Washington. Congress can be a huge barrier."