Did you see the Q-and-A that Barack Obama did the other day with House Republicans? Here's a link to a transcript and video and I recommend you experience one or the other. It was a remarkable discussion if only because of the sudden reappearance of the guy some of us voted to put in the White House. He stood his ground and at least tried to establish a healthier working relationship with the opposition party. I dunno if anything can make that happen but this was sure a noble effort.
He also demonstrated that though he may use a TelePrompter a lot, that's just to tidy up his sentence structures. The thinking was all there in an utterly ad-lib setting. Anyone think George W. Bush could have done that in a hall full of House Democrats? Or would ever have tried?
A lot of folks are noting a couple of exchanges where Obama, with great diplomacy, engaged certain reps on specific facts. I thought a key moment was when he told them that all the demonizing they were doing of his Administration was making bipartisanship impossible — for themselves…
I mean, the fact of the matter is is that many of you, if you voted with the administration on something, are politically vulnerable in your own base, in your own party. You've given yourselves very little room to work in a bipartisan fashion because what you've been telling your constituents is, "This guy's doing all kinds of crazy stuff that's going to destroy America."
He said it gentler in the State of the Union speech when he itemized a number of tax cuts that his Administration has made and then noted that Republicans, who claim to love tax cuts, weren't applauding them. They couldn't…because they were Democratic tax cuts. (I also think they weren't applauding because a lot of the cuts were for lower and middle-class folks. Republicans in general love all tax cuts but the ones in Congress only really like the ones for rich people.)
Once you tell your constituents that everything Obama does is evil, you can't meet him halfway on anything without appearing to be compromising with evil. You can't even support him when he does things you like. I think that's a lot of our problem right there.