The Obama campaign’s combination of a Watson-esque super computer and old school door-to-door canvassing secured a 332 to 206 win in the Electoral College with a popular vote that saw Governor Mitt Romney receive an ironic 47% of the vote. “The Obama Machine,” coined by Politico, showed that a candidate’s ground game can prevail in a post-Citizens United democracy. With a second term, President Barrack Obama has the national network to take his case right to the people, but he could learn a thing or two from the smoke-filled rooms depicted in Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln.

By winning re-election Obama has kept possession of the ball in the football game of public policy. The Affordable Care Act will not be repealed. He will not appoint Supreme Court justices that will overturn Roe vs. Wade. Immigrants will not self deport. There will not be an amendment to the Constitution banning gay marriage. However, the House Speaker is still John Boehner and the Senate Minority Leader is still Mitch McConnell. Obama will be working with a divided Congress for the next two years, and barring a reversal of “the six year itch,” the Democrats will not take back the house in 2014.

Although President Obama is a master of rhetoric and campaigning in the twenty-first century, he is a novice in politics. He didn’t serve a full term in the senate, and in the books The Obamas and Game Change he has expressed open disdain for the way policy is negotiated in Washington. He does not throw cocktail parties at the White House and he is often hesitant to meet with Speaker Boehner and Senator McConnell in a less professional setting. But this is how deals have been and always will be made in Washington D.C.

Smoke-filled rooms make up almost a third of Lincoln because closed door negotiations win votes in the legislature as readily as the bully pulpit wins votes in the electorate. Although he himself was a great speaker, Abraham Lincoln knew that the twelve Democratic votes in favor of the thirteenth amendment would not be won with another great speech. He deployed a team of negotiators to lobby congressmen in their home districts, and when they returned to Washington, President Lincoln had to close the deal.  Lincoln, played by Daniel Day Lewis, paces with a furrowed brow through the smoke of Secretary of State Seward’s cigar smoke, blown by David Russell Strathairn, as they discuss how to persuade Democrats who were vehemently opposed to abolishing slavery.

For some, Seward convinces Lincoln that patronage jobs will get the lame duck Democrats. Even though this is a dirtier tactic than would be expected of the well-read Lincoln, he was a pragmatist in the oval office. Obama may not be able to get away with it in the age of twenty-four hour news, but both he and Lincoln’s intellectual demeanors are at odds with the soul selling that goes into making deals in Washington. For other Democratic votes, Lincoln simply needed a chair and a room to win a vote. This is where Obama should watch closely if he sees the movie. Negotiations do not have to be all about business. Daniel Day Lewis’s best moments in the movie occur when he portrays Lincoln’s love of the story, and it worked in the negotiations with the final Democrats that voted in favor of the thirteenth amendment.

Just like President Obama, President Lincoln was a masterful speaker from humble beginnings who embodied everything that is great about this nation. However, ignoble means achieve noble ends in Washington. Barrack Obama was certainly genuine in his transcendental message before he became President Barrack Obama. But to solve the problems of his time, he will have to get down and dirty and engage his opposition face to face in negotiations that he may not be proud of, but he will do it so he can make changes he will be proud of.