Our president is not leading. I did not vote for him, but prayed he would do well.

Today, I believe he is not a good leader, or he simply refuses to take responsibility for the problems he faces as president.

In January, we read news stories about President Obama’s concern for his legacy.

His legacy should have been the last thing on his mind. Doing the right things for our country should be his only focus.

Then we faced sequestration the first time: raise taxes and decrease the deficit, or else.

We got the “raise taxes” part and sequestration delay, plus the president’s promise to include deficit reduction in a plan by March.

What has he done in the meantime? He has traveled around the country telling everyone that Congress is the problem; that taxes need to go up. He has ignored the deficit.

Finally, in the paper (“White House details impact in Maine from budget cuts,” Feb. 25), we read that his staff has been spending their time gathering data so the president could tell us how much each state would lose when sequestration hit last Friday because Congress has failed. That is not leadership!

It is not Congress alone that has failed. Our president has failed miserably as well. Why were the president and his staff not spending their time working to complete and get bipartisan agreement on the comprehensive plan “he” promised to the American people?

I’m not a Democrat, but I will bet that had Lyndon Johnson faced a Congress that could not work together, his solution would not have been to complain incessantly in the media. He would have taken congressional leadership and whoever else he needed out back to the woodshed until they, as a team, solved their problems.

That’s ownership, that’s the leadership we need today. The election is over — get to work.

Daniel J. Rooney is a resident of Sanford.