Obama is supposed to act as an agent of his constituents and a leader at the same time. His constituents are tens of to 100+ million Americans with a variety of demands. He has to vote or act their way a good amount of time to get or stay elected. It's very constrained and dirty due to inherently corrupt environment between cost of elections (excludes good folks, promotes lobbying) and tyranny of majority. System and demand side are problem because they exclude all honest, decent people from President. Name a counterexample in past two decades if you doubt that.

So, Presidents and often (not always) Congress are a special situation compared to a group voluntarily creating organizatikns to push for harm and people supporting that over better organizations. Totally different in both what options are available to people starting nonprofits and which people can donate to vs what specific actions a President or Congress can pull off.