From WAPO. The article begins with Obama's promises that he would bring Democrat and Republican together when he won the presidency in 2008 and what happened to lead to so much "gridlock" today. It deals with the question: Why has President Obama fallen so far short of what he so passionately described
as a candidate four years ago?
Basically there are two sides to the issue:
That Obama ran into a wall of opposition from the
Republicans on many of those initiatives is indisputable. What is at odds in
these varying interpretations is whether anything might have changed that.
Republicans say it could have been different. But there is little evidence that,
once their leadership decided to oppose Obama, there was much he could have done
to win them over — and there are plenty of examples showing how dug in they
were.
There are also questions about how hard Obama tried. His advisers cannot
point to a clear strategy for trying to create a climate of cooperation — other
than their belief that the support he won in the election and the economic
crisis would create those conditions. They argue that he incorporated Republican
ideas into the stimulus and spent months waiting to see if a bipartisan
health-care plan would emerge from the Senate Finance
Committee.
Both parties and Obama dropped the ball at various times resulting in the confrontations that exist today. Obama and Republicans no longer represent the kind of leaders that go back to the "partnership" of Senator Dirksen (Rep., IL) and President Johnson (Dem.) who were willing to cooperate on a number of important issues.
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