But his allies concede that he has at times been ineffectual in battles over public opinion.
Some of these scenes appear familiar, like the corporate Darwinian battle where an ineffectual businessman (Daniel Kublick) is bullied into betting his family's savings, leading to the unraveling of his marriage.
With Yaya Toure restricted to a deep-lying midfield role and Javi Garcia largely ineffectual, Arsenal bossed the midfield battle early on, with Ramsey and Mikel Arteta pulling the strings.
Of the others, was destroyed on the stocks; was hastily launched and then burned to avoid capture; and was used merely as an ineffectual floating battery at the Battle of Forts Jackson and St. Philip, when the fate of New Orleans was decided, and she was then blown up rather than be surrendered.
Historian Bertram Wolffe said it was thanks to Shakespeare's dramatisation of the battle that the weak and ineffectual Henry was at least remembered by English society, albeit for his pining to have been born a shepherd rather than a king.
Belittled by his cooler, tougher elder brother Rodrick, frustrated by his mollycoddled younger brother Manny and ignored by the class catch Holly Hills – all under the watchful eye of his well-intentioned mother and ineffectual father – he is stuck in an eternal battle for recognition in a world full of more significant, less gauche rivals.
In New England, a proposed conservation measure typically inspires a decade of battling that leads, at best, to an ineffectual compromise.
As Moses quickly learns, Bernard and Solomon carried on a lifelong feud - the third brother, the ineffectual Morrie, spent his life in the middle - and their battle for family hegemony would be passed down to their children, with Bernard's scheming son, Lionel, trying to manipulate Solomon's offspring, Lucy and Henry, out of their inheritance.
Item: In the battle against ISIL, American airpower has proven largely ineffectual.
Critics have compared directors to "parsley on fish", decorative but ineffectual; or honorary colonels, "ornamental in parade but fairly useless in battle".
The result of this arrangement has been a battle as long and, up until now, at least, as ineffectual as any on Capitol Hill.
