He doesn’t have a bully pulpit yet. Republicans barely control the House and the Senate is gridlock 50/50. Give him a supermajority and see what he can get done
If you have a supermajority, you don’t need to use the bully pulpit. The bully pulpit is the outsized microphone that a president has to rally support and make his (or her, someday) point.
You have to be able to back it up with real legislative threats to be a bully pulpit. A president with no legislative cooperation can say whatever they want, but when everyone knows they can’t do anything, corpos will just laugh it off. Bully pulpit is really when you have enough power to be able to say, “You fix this or else we’ll fix it for you.”
The bully pulpit in Roosevelt’s mind wasn’t about pummeling legislators with presidential authority; rather, he believed the president could encourage the public to push their legislators on behalf of his agenda. - source
Not using the bully pulpit as president to push your agenda is almost malfeasance. If he has votes/support, there is no need for it.
