By Yael T. Abouhalkah, Kansas City Star Editorial Page columnist

Just two weeks after his inauguration, President Barack Obama has failed to bring needed changes to Washington's culture.

His attempt at bipartisanship on the U.S. House stimulus bill crashed and burned.

Not one but two of his most coveted Cabinet jobs are going to people who essentially cheated on their taxes, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and Health and Human Services nominee Tom Daschle.

And, so far, Obama is not having much luck getting Senate Democrats to strip billions of dollars in potentially wasted spending from their stimulus package.

Of course, the expectations of Obama as a change agent were -- and remain -- remarkably high.

The latest polls show about two-thirds of Americans think highly of Obama, which is a credit to the job he did getting ready to take office from former President George Bush,

And Obama certainly gets credit for trying to forge a bipartisan approach on the stimulus plan. He took some arrows from his own Democratic Party for doing that.

However, Obama has quickly discovered that smooth-talking other elected officials isn't as easy as smooth-talking American voters and getting them to believe in him.

It's something other presidents have found out, too.

The trick for Obama is to get past the first few bumps in his initial weeks in office and continue forging his own path of trying to change D.C.'s culture.

The single most important charge at this point is to fashion a stimulus package stripped of all the extravagant and unnecessary spending on social programs crammed into the current bills.

That would be a great service to Americans. And it would be a victory for Obama in his attempt to truly alter for the better how decisions are made in Washington.