Rick Hohensee holds a "Fire Congress" sign near the House steps on Capitol Hill in Washington on Tuesday, October 8, as a partial government shutdown reaches its second week. The federal government entered a shutdown October 1, furloughing hundreds of thousands of workers. Many government services and agencies remain completely or partially closed. 
Officers stand at the base of stairs leading to the Capitol Rotunda on Monday, October 7. 
A bull elk appears to stick out its tongue at the closed north entrance to Yellowstone National Park in Montana on October 7 in a photo submitted by iReporter Brad Orsted. Orsted joked the animal was giving its opinion on the government shutdown. 
Tourists take photos at a barricade blocking access to the World War II Memorial in Washington on Sunday, October 6. 
River runners make camp in a dirt parking lot in Marble Canyon, Arizona, after being unable to access the Colorado River at Lee's Ferry on Saturday, October 5. 
A closure sign is posted on the National Mall in front of the U.S. Capitol in Washington on Thursday, October 3. 
Tourists take photos of the Statue of Liberty while riding a tour boat in New York Harbor on October 3. The statue is adminstered by the National Park Service and is closed as a result of the government shutdown. 
A single security guard patrols the closed Lincoln Memorial in Washington on October 3. 
A U.S. Capitol police officer walks past a statue of Gerald Ford in the rotunda on Tuesday, October 1. The Capitol is closed to tours because of the government shutdown. 
Barricades around the World War II Memorial in Washington prevent people from entering the monument on October 1. The memorial was temporary opened to veteran groups who arrived on Honor Flights on a day trip to visit the nation's capital. 
World War II veteran Russell Tucker of Meridian, Mississippi, stands outside the barricade as he visits the World War II Memorial in Washington on October 1. 
World War II Veteran George Bloss, from Gulfport, Mississippi, looks out over the National World War II Memorial in Washington, on October 1. Veterans who had traveled from across the country were allowed to visit the National World War II Memorial after it had been officially closed because of the partial government shutdown. 
A park ranger secures a road at the entrance to the Mount Rushmore National Memorial on October 1 in Keystone, South Dakota. 
A sign is posted in the window of an IRS office in Brooklyn notifying that the office is closed due to the government shutdown on October 1. 
A visitor takes a picture of a sign announcing the closure of the Fort Point National Historic Site due to the partial government shutdown on October 1 in San Francisco, California. 
A hand-written sign informs visitors to Faneuil Hall, the nation's oldest public meeting hall, that restrooms are closed as a result of the partial government shutdown in Boston, on October 1. 
Visitors to Independence National Historical Park are reflected in the window of the closed building housing the Liberty Bell, on October 1 in Philadelphia. 
Mark Weekley, superintendent at the National Park Service's Lewis and Clark National Historical Trail, puts up a sign proclaiming the facility closed due to the federal government shutdown, in Omaha, Nebraska, on October 1. 
Hot Springs National Park employee Stacy Jackson carries a barricade while closing Arlington Lawn in Hot Springs National Park in Arkansas on October 1. 
The Washington Monument is seen behind a chain fence in Washington, on October 1. 
A National Park Service ranger finishes putting up a sign indicating all facilities at the Martin Luther King Historic Site are closed to the public in Atlanta, on October 1. 
A Capitol police officer walks through the empty Capitol Rotunda, closed to tours during the government shutdown on Capitol Hill in Washington, on October 1. 
An employee at the Springfield Armory National Historic Site in Springfield, Massachusetts, puts up a sign on October 1, to notify visitors that the site is closed because of a government shutdown. 
A U.S. Park Service police officer stands at the closed Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial on the National Mall in Washington on October 1. 
A man looks into the closed Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington on October 1. 
A National Parks Service ranger posts a sign on the doors of the historic Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta on October 1 notifying visitors that the church is closed. 
A U.S. park ranger places a closed sign on a barricade in front of the World War II Memorial in Washington on October 1. 
Park police and Park Service employees close down the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial on the National Mall on October 1. 
A sign informs visitors that the Suresnes American Cemetery and Memorial, west of Paris, is closed because of the shutdown on October 1. 
A man walks past a sign noting the closure at the Cuyahoga Valley National Park in Valley View, Ohio, on October 1. 
Members of the U.S. National Park Service close the Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall in Washington on October 1. 
A U.S. park ranger posts a closed sign at the Lincoln Memorial on October 1. 
A sign alerting visitors that the National Gallery of Art is closed stands outside the building on October 1. 
People look at a sign announcing that the Statue of Liberty is closed in New York on October 1. 
Fencing around the World War II Memorial prevents people from entering the monument on the National Mall in Washington on October 1. 
Signs taped on museum doors alert visitors that the National Museum of American History in Washington is closed on October 1. 
A U.S. park service police officer stands guard at the entrance of the closed Lincoln Memorial on October 1. 
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- Eric Liu: The pro-shutdown radicals have no interest in resolution
- Liu: Though the president didn't make the crisis, as a leader, it falls to him to fix it
- He says there are four ways Obama can be more proactive in ending shutdown
- Liu: If default approaches, Obama needs to do a prime-time address to the public
Editor's note: Eric Liu is the founder of Citizen University and author of several books, including "The Gardens of Democracy" and "The Accidental Asian." He served as a White House speechwriter and policy adviser for President Clinton. Follow him on Twitter @ericpliu
(CNN) -- Last week, as the government shutdown began, I found myself irritated by establishment conservative commentators like Peggy Noonan, who said President Obama needed to lead and resolve the crisis -- as if the hostage-takers in the House had nothing to do with the matter.
But lately, I've realized that those commentators were right. The pro-shutdown radicals have no interest in resolution. Moderate Republicans are too timid and too few. And it's too easy for angry Democrats to point out, as was my own first reflex, that they didn't create this mess.
So it does fall to Obama to lead us out of the dysfunction. Thus far, he's focused more on a Beltway audience. In a news conference on Tuesday, Obama explained lucidly that the economy shouldn't be treated as ransom. But few Americans were watching. And for the most part, he has used his aides or private phone calls to reiterate his position that no substantive negotiations can begin until the tea party caucus releases the government.
This is not wrong. It's just an inside game. What the president needs to do now is play the outside game robustly.
Now, again, let's be very clear: This shutdown is the making of a reckless fringe of the Republican Party and a House speaker too weak to control it. There should be no false equivalency in any honest reading of the origins of the crisis. But in the end, pointing out this asymmetry of blame is not the same as leading. Leaders solve problems. They lead.
Although the president didn't make this crisis, he needs to fix it. To do that, he should start using his office far more assertively, to shift the terms of the debate so that he is understood in popular opinion not as one of two equal antagonists but as the sole representative of sane, grown-up, responsible leadership.
Obama has a national megaphone that no one -- not even a senator staging a fake filibuster -- can match. He is more trusted (or at least less mistrusted than Congress) to tell it straight.
Obama: Boehner should not delay vote 
Obama: America's good name is at stake Here are a few ways for him to take the initiative.
1. Speak directly to Americans.
First, the president should speak more directly and more often to the American people. He could do a series of "fireside chats" every night for a week, describing how we got here, explaining why giving in to tea party blackmail would be wrong and generating popular pressure on Speaker John Boehner to end the shutdown.
His team could put the chats on social media and let them spread or even buy a block of ad time during Sunday's football games to air the whole series.
If the crisis drags on and the date of default approaches, he should do a prime-time address from the Oval Office befitting the level of crisis. Stagecraft matters. A news conference like the one he held on Tuesday is better than nothing, but it is still playing to the Washington media and is inherently reactive.
2. Build a "coalition of the responsible."
The president should invite every non-radical Republican he can find -- not just current Washington players but also recent candidates like Tim Pawlenty and elders like President George H.W. Bush and Colin Powell, as well as business leaders from across the country -- for a national unity session that claims the center and isolates the fringe.
The message of the session, voiced not by him but by these Republicans, should be that while the parties can disagree vehemently on taxes and spending and health care, using as leverage the financing of government itself is radical and dangerous. The president should emphasize that his quarrel is not with Republican voters or their party but with a band of radicals.
3. Meet the people, especially those who hate you.
The president should schedule town meetings in the districts of the most radical Republicans, offering to meet with the citizens there to listen and to make his case. He will certainly face vitriol. But that's the point: He will face it. He will be there meeting people with respect and even empathy. He will show that he doesn't write off any American, even those who demonize him. This will be far more powerful than going to friendly audiences for staged events -- and it will make clear to independents that he can break out of the usual partisan script.
4. Get concrete about good faith.
Fourth, he could go beyond his generic willingness to discuss long-term tax and entitlement issues and commit specifically to a negotiation that begins the day after the government reopens and the debt ceiling is satisfactorily raised. Here, too, he can claim the mantle of good faith and reasonableness.
Of course, he could also do all of the above, with campaign-style optimism and an openness of mind and heart that will contrast sharply with the fanaticism of the pro-shutdown caucus.
This prefabricated crisis may end suddenly, or it may linger and bring us to the very edge of a disastrous default. Either way, it behooves the president now to lead in more visible, more symbolic, more populist ways -- not only to prevail on this fight but to restore a politics in which not every fight has to be a fight to the death. Congress has never made it clearer why we need a strong president.
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The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Eric Liu.
