Did Obama Change DC Culture While Setting New Fuel and Emissions Standards?

President Barack Obama yesterday announced aggressive new standards to increase fuel efficiency and reduce greenhouse gas emissions for all new cars and trucks sold in the United States, beginning in 2012 and fully realizing the new standards by 2016.

Besides saving fuel and helping to put the brakes on global warming, the announcement also resolved longstanding disagreements between U.S. automakers, several state governments and leading environmentalists.

In reporting Obama’s announcement, the White House blog called the new standards and the president’s achievement in negotiating them a part of “the makings of a change in the culture of Washington.”

And in his announcement, Obama said: “In the past, an agreement such as this would have been considered impossible. That is why this announcement is so important, for it represents not only a change in policy in Washington, but the harbinger of a change in the way business is done in Washington.”

While President Obama certainly deserves a hefty measure of credit for crafting a solution that managed to get so many different people with divergent points of view smiling and waving in unison—not to mention the achievements of his first 100 days—he may not deserve quite as much credit as he is taking for his latest coup.

Many politicians have set out to change the way things get done in Washington, DC, but the culture of Washington and how business is done in the nation’s capitol doesn’t change so easily. For Obama to claim that kind of sweeping, fundamental change as a result of a single successful political maneuver, even one as extraordinarily successful as this one, is itself an example of business as usual in Washington.