You need a scorecard to keep up with President Barack Obama’s plethora of priorities. On the domestic policy side, he has vowed to make sweeping changes in health care, energy and education.

An important subset of education—workforce training—tends to fly under the radar in Washington, but it will require more presidential and congressional leadership than it has received in a long time.

Obama appears set to provide guidance. On May 8, he announced that the Departments of Labor and Education would work with states and educational institutions to allow recently laid off workers to receive unemployment payments while they are enrolled in training programs and to have easier access to educational grants.

“The idea here is to fundamentally change our approach to unemployment in this country, so that it’s no longer just a time to look for a new job, but is also a time to prepare yourself for a better job,” Obama said.

Now Obama will have to follow through in an area that has languished from neglect in Washington.

The federal law that undergirds training programs, the Workforce Investment Act, has been up for renewal for nearly six years but has been stymied by a variety of policy and political issues. Congress is under way with another attempt.

Most experts and users of the system agree that it needs to be more flexible to respond to local labor market needs. Too many programs are run in silos and fail to communicate with one another.

Determining what kind of training is offered for what kind of jobs is a huge question that can elicit many different answers. The Obama administration wants to focus on so-called “green jobs.” The $787 billion stimulus package included $500 million for training in that area.

Republicans caution that federal training should be improved for all kinds of occupations and worry about artificial demand being created by government fiat.

Democrats also question whether job training priorities have been set correctly. Rep. David Obey, D-Wisconsin and chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, expressed concern at a May 12 hearing on the Department of Labor budget.

He noted that the stimulus bill included $250 million for training for health care industry jobs. But the administration’s budget request for the agency didn’t contain similar funding.

“If we’re serious about significant health care reform, we need to build the capacity of the system, and we’re falling short in this area,” Obey told Labor Secretary Hilda Solis.

The thousands of jobs that Dollar General Corp. will have to fill over the next couple years aren’t necessarily “green.” But they could offer a path out of the recession for thousands of workers—if they are qualified.

As Dollar General Stores become more automated in tracking and managing inventory, employees have to be more fluent with technology, according to David Bere, president and chief strategy officer.

They don’t have to have bachelor’s degrees, but they should have training beyond high school. “You need a higher skill set in our stores and distribution centers,” Bere said in an interview after a recent House hearing on the Workforce Investment Act.

Dollar General has long been an advocate of federal training programs. Bere urges other companies to join in the effort to reshape the system. 

“The business community has to step up,” Bere said. “Only by partnership is this going to get done.”

When it comes to job training, many constituencies want to see improvement. But it will take firm leadership from Obama and Congress to make sure that they work together to set priorities that make sense for workers and the economy.

What has passed for bipartisanship in Washington so far this year is really just the flexing of political muscle.

Throughout his campaign and his nascent administration, President Barack Obama touted his ability to forge consensus from warring political parties. So far, there’s no evidence of it. There doesn’t have to be, with Democrats holding significant majorities on Capitol Hill.

His stimulus bill passed with just three Republican votes—one of which is now on the Democratic side of the aisle. Congress approved his $3.5 trillion budget blueprint along partisan lines. And the first bill he signed—one dealing with pay discrimination—garnered only a small slice of Republican support.

Democrats often allow consideration of Republican amendments to legislation in committees and in floor debate—on the Senate side, at least. That’s because they know that have more than enough votes to squash GOP ideas.

But there was evidence during the previous Congress that normally adversarial sides could achieve consensus on major legislation. One example was a bill that put mental health and medical benefits on equal footing. The other was a measure that expanded the Americans with Disabilities Act.

In each case, the business lobby and advocacy groups came together and wrestled the legislation to the ground through tough, good-faith negotiations. The Democratic majorities in Congress left business with no other option.

Chai Feldblum led the disability side in the ADA talks. She hopes to use the model to move legislation that would foster novel work arrangements at U.S. companies.

As co-director of Workplace Flexibility 2010, an initiative based at the Georgetown University Law Center, Feldblum could be a catalyst for cooperation between business and advocacy groups.

Reaching agreement on the ADA bill required 10 months of negotiation over the definition of disability. Working through the meaning of flexible work arrangements, time off and career maintenance and re-entry—the three “buckets” of flexibility, as defined by the Georgetown group—could be a bigger challenge because there are so many dimensions to the effort.

“We think of this as more like climate change,” Feldblum says.

But she’s optimistic that consensus can be reached. “I’m more hopeful for this enterprise than [she was] for ADA,” she says.

The Society for Human Resource Management is eager to get to the negotiating table. On May 7, SHRM released a set of principles for flexible work designed to start a dialogue about alternatives to legislation like a paid sick leave bill that will soon be introduced.

The organization proposes that companies that voluntarily offer a certain amount of paid time off be protected from federal leave mandates.

Workplace Flexibility 2010 isn’t taking a position on SHRM’s idea, but it is happy that SHRM is raising its voice. “We welcome the fact of people saying: Let’s have a conversation,” Feldblum says.

The Senate is off to a bipartisan approach in addressing workplace flexibility. The Senate Workplace Flexibility Study Group was established in August by three Democrats—Sens. Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas, Herb Kohl  of Wisconsin, Christopher Dodd of Connecticut—and three Republicans: Michael Crapo of Idaho, Susan Collins of Maine and George Voinovich of Ohio.

The panel is looking at research and data on flexibility practices and their effect on companies and employees. And they’re listening to everyone.

“It’s as even-handed an approach as you will see in this town,” says a Lincoln aide.

The foundation of cooperation is strong. “There is no gamesmanship,” Feldblum says.

Many companies argue that flexibility is one of the keys to competitiveness. We’ll see if political competition—partisanship—can be kept out of flexibility policy.

In an attempt to break free from the journalistic pack, I am providing an assessment of President Barack Obama on his 107th day in office.

Like almost every other reporter and pundit in Washington, I’ve been thinking—probably too much—about last week’s contrived milestone.

My initial encounter with the president occurred just days into his tenure. I went to the White House to cover the ceremony for the first piece of legislation that Obama signed into law—the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act.

Luckily, the White House press office hadn’t processed my day pass when I showed up at the Northwest Gate. That delayed my entry and made me one of the last two reporters to be escorted to the East Room.

Along the way, we were held up. Soon, the reason was apparent. Obama was walking toward us from the Rose Garden, where he had just welcomed Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Obama poked his head in the door near where I was standing. He bantered amiably with one of his aides, teasing him about the long work hours the staffer already was keeping.

The president acted as if he had just met a neighbor at Saturday brunch in his Hyde Park neighborhood in Chicago. He was breezily self-possessed and relaxed.

He started the bill-signing ceremony with a folksy “How’s it goin’?” to the assembled Capitol Hill and advocacy leaders.

I experienced firsthand the reassuring vibe that Obama radiates. His body language says that he’s got everything under control, even in the middle of a brutal recession and in the midst of two wars.

His manner contrasted sharply with Clinton’s. She was a bundle of edgy energy as she made her way to the East Room. Her style is much more like Sen. John McCain’s. I’ve encountered McCain in the halls of the Senate. He comes across as intense, even fierce.

But Clinton and McCain may have done something in their first 100 days in the Oval Office that Obama has not. They would have said no to significant supporters about a big policy matter.

Clinton and McCain probably would have rubbed some people the wrong way and had swaths of the country upset with them already. Obama, on the other hand, is riding high with popularity ratings hovering near 65 percent.

But it’s easy to be popular when you never say no. True, Obama has pretty much ignored policies pushed by organized labor, such as a bill that would make it easier to form unions and rewriting trade agreements.

But that’s not the same as taking clear policy positions. Obama temporizes, like a professor exploring all sides of an issue with a class.

He eloquently analyzes problems and proposes sweeping solutions, as if he’s sketching them out on a huge blackboard. He gives captivating lectures. But so far, he hasn’t taken tough stances.

For the most part, Obama has presided over spending trillions of dollars. When you put $787 billion in the stimulus package and Congress passes your $3.5 trillion budget, not too many people have been rejected in their funding requests.

Obama says that the spending is necessary to revive the economy and restructure it for future prosperity. That may be true. He deserves credit for setting a bold path—health care, energy and education reform all at once—and putting an enormous amount of money where his mouth is.

But he’s not getting into the details of policy. That would mean sketching out a position that others can attack.

For instance, Obama is letting Congress take the lead on health care and immigration reform. He’s staying out of the firing line.

It makes his Capitol Hill allies a little nervous. Sen. Max Baucus, D-Montana and chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, told reporters a couple weeks ago that the White House should participate in shaping the reform plan.

“We don’t want to get blindsided,” Baucus said.

Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Connecticut and a leader of the Senate Health, Education, Pensions and Labor Committee, made a similar point at a meeting with reporters.

“I want the White House involved,” Dodd said. “They need to be at the table.”

Obama favors a table in immigration reform—a round one filled with members of Congress.

“So what I hope to happen is that we’re able to convene a working group … to start looking at a framework of how this legislation might be shaped,” Obama said at an April 29 press conference.

But Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, expressed frustration at what he thought was the president’s tiptoeing around a subject that already has been thoroughly parsed.

“It’s essential that the president demonstrate the leadership that can only come from the president in telling us what his plan is,” Cornyn said at an April 30 hearing.

In his caution, Obama is no different from most other politicians. That’s OK. Most politicians are good people trying to do what they think is best for the country while preserving their own viability.

One thing’s for certain: Professor Obama’s class is likely to be the most stimulating one on the Washington campus.