President Obama and House Speaker John Boehner attempted to forge a comprehensive budget deal in 2011, a process that ended bitterly.
President Obama and House Speaker John Boehner attempted to forge a comprehensive budget deal in 2011, a process that ended bitterly.
By Matt Viser
WASHINGTON — In January 2010, just one year into his presidency, President Obama traveled from the White House to Capitol Hill to deliver his first State of the Union address. Health care was being debated, Republican Scott Brown had just been elected senator from Massachusetts, and the economy remained sluggish.
With his presidency already at a crossroads, Obama returned to a theme that had guided his political career: He admonished both parties for their divisiveness, urged them to work together, and said he hadn’t given up on trying to change the corrosive tone of the country’s politics.
In fact, he said, he wanted to begin meeting monthly with Republican and Democratic leaders to “show the American people that we can do it together.”
“I know you can’t wait,” he added, as members of Congress laughed.
WASHINGTON — In January 2010, just one year into his presidency, President Obama traveled from the White House to Capitol Hill to deliver his first State of the Union address. Health care was being debated, Republican Scott Brown had just been elected senator from Massachusetts, and the economy remained sluggish.
With his presidency already at a crossroads, Obama returned to a theme that had guided his political career: He admonished both parties for their divisiveness, urged them to work together, and said he hadn’t given up on trying to change the corrosive tone of the country’s politics.
In fact, he said, he wanted to begin meeting monthly with Republican and Democratic leaders to “show the American people that we can do it together.”
“I know you can’t wait,” he added, as members of Congress laughed.
But wait they did.
‘Historians will long debate what would have happened if the president had chosen to proceed somewhat more slowly and cautiously.’
His first one-on-one meeting with the top Republican in the House, John Boehner, did not come for another year and a half. In nearly five years in office, Obama has met individually with Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell two times, according to a review of White House visitor logs, pool reports, and press releases. Obama did initially hold regular meetings with other members of the congressional leadership; after several months those sessions became sporadic.
Obama’s talk of uniting the nation often has not translated into, to use military parlance, “boots on the ground.” He has visited Democrat-leaning “blue” states six times more often than he has visited Republican “red” states. He has staffed much of his administration with people who grew up in blue states. None of his major legislative accomplishments — the stimulus, health care, and financial reforms — received more than six Republican votes.
In sum, one of the biggest failures of Obama’s presidency is that, five years after he took office vowing to close the partisan divide, the capital he now oversees and the country he represents are far more divided than they were before he came.
Washington is as poisonous — and, to use Obama’s words, petty and immature — as ever. Obama has not turned the United States into 50 purple states, where compromise is desired and citizens agree there are two sides to each coin. It is indisputable, longtime observers says, that the red states are redder, and the blue states are bluer.
PETE SOUZA/THE WHITE HOUSE
President Obama has met privately with Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell only twice, including in the Oval Office on Aug. 4, 2010.
Obama may not be principally to blame for this baleful trend. But he is also not a bystander. In the story of why Washington is more broken than Obama found it, analysts said that while Republicans bear considerable responsibility, so, in his own way, does the president. His leadership style has inspired millions of supporters but also has angered countless conservatives, who have coalesced into a fiercely uncompromising opposition. It is all a long way from the vision presented by Obama when he entered the national spotlight.
• • •
It was on the second night of the Democratic National Convention in Boston in 2004 when the little-known state senator from Illinois captivated the nation in a 17-minute keynote address. Obama sounded a pitch-perfect note for a country that had grown increasingly discordant. The text of the speech he gave at the Democratic National Convention was so stirring in its call for unity that the nominee that year, John Kerry, reportedly wanted him to tone it down a little.
“The pundits like to slice and dice our country into red states and blue states,” a fresh-faced Obama said at the time. “But I’ve got news for them . . . We are one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the stars and stripes, all of us defending the United States of America.”
The next month, Newsweek put him grinning on its cover, with the headline, “Seeing Purple.”
It solidified an impression he had carefully constructed. His cultural and multiracial background seemed to enable him to find comfort in many different settings. He was the first black president of the Harvard Law Review. He wrote an autobiography, “The Audacity of Hope,” about a brand of politics he thinks should bring people together.
As he ran for president, Obama continued to preach the merits of purple politics.
“Let us resist the temptation to fall back on the same partisanship and pettiness and immaturity that has poisoned our politics for too long,” he said to the throngs in Chicago’s Grant Park the night of his 2008 election. The country — both red states and blue states — seemed to buy it. That night, he had flipped Virginia and North Carolina to the Democratic column. He had won New Mexico and Colorado in the West, and took Indiana and Iowa in the Midwest.
But when he was elected, it brought out an animosity unlike anything he had seen before. Until his run for president, he had largely been spared Republican invective. During his US Senate race in 2004, not a single negative TV ad ran against him.
During his presidential campaign, Obama’s rosy rhetoric about healing the persistent partisan and racial divides sounded nice on television and in speeches. But now he was confronting an opposition ready to challenge his every move.
The rest of this article: http://www.bostonglobe.com/news/politics/2013/10/13/the-purple-nation-president-obama-once-envisioned-has-grown-into-hues-deeper-red-and-blue/xxGBjFlwZXTRMp7kEx2F0I/story.html?rss_id=Top-GNP&google_editors_picks=true
But wait they did.
‘Historians will long debate what would have happened if the president had chosen to proceed somewhat more slowly and cautiously.’
His first one-on-one meeting with the top Republican in the House, John Boehner, did not come for another year and a half. In nearly five years in office, Obama has met individually with Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell two times, according to a review of White House visitor logs, pool reports, and press releases. Obama did initially hold regular meetings with other members of the congressional leadership; after several months those sessions became sporadic.
Obama’s talk of uniting the nation often has not translated into, to use military parlance, “boots on the ground.” He has visited Democrat-leaning “blue” states six times more often than he has visited Republican “red” states. He has staffed much of his administration with people who grew up in blue states. None of his major legislative accomplishments — the stimulus, health care, and financial reforms — received more than six Republican votes.
In sum, one of the biggest failures of Obama’s presidency is that, five years after he took office vowing to close the partisan divide, the capital he now oversees and the country he represents are far more divided than they were before he came.
Washington is as poisonous — and, to use Obama’s words, petty and immature — as ever. Obama has not turned the United States into 50 purple states, where compromise is desired and citizens agree there are two sides to each coin. It is indisputable, longtime observers says, that the red states are redder, and the blue states are bluer.
PETE SOUZA/THE WHITE HOUSE
President Obama has met privately with Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell only twice, including in the Oval Office on Aug. 4, 2010.
Obama may not be principally to blame for this baleful trend. But he is also not a bystander. In the story of why Washington is more broken than Obama found it, analysts said that while Republicans bear considerable responsibility, so, in his own way, does the president. His leadership style has inspired millions of supporters but also has angered countless conservatives, who have coalesced into a fiercely uncompromising opposition. It is all a long way from the vision presented by Obama when he entered the national spotlight.
• • •
It was on the second night of the Democratic National Convention in Boston in 2004 when the little-known state senator from Illinois captivated the nation in a 17-minute keynote address. Obama sounded a pitch-perfect note for a country that had grown increasingly discordant. The text of the speech he gave at the Democratic National Convention was so stirring in its call for unity that the nominee that year, John Kerry, reportedly wanted him to tone it down a little.
“The pundits like to slice and dice our country into red states and blue states,” a fresh-faced Obama said at the time. “But I’ve got news for them . . . We are one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the stars and stripes, all of us defending the United States of America.”
The next month, Newsweek put him grinning on its cover, with the headline, “Seeing Purple.”
It solidified an impression he had carefully constructed. His cultural and multiracial background seemed to enable him to find comfort in many different settings. He was the first black president of the Harvard Law Review. He wrote an autobiography, “The Audacity of Hope,” about a brand of politics he thinks should bring people together.
As he ran for president, Obama continued to preach the merits of purple politics.
“Let us resist the temptation to fall back on the same partisanship and pettiness and immaturity that has poisoned our politics for too long,” he said to the throngs in Chicago’s Grant Park the night of his 2008 election. The country — both red states and blue states — seemed to buy it. That night, he had flipped Virginia and North Carolina to the Democratic column. He had won New Mexico and Colorado in the West, and took Indiana and Iowa in the Midwest.
But when he was elected, it brought out an animosity unlike anything he had seen before. Until his run for president, he had largely been spared Republican invective. During his US Senate race in 2004, not a single negative TV ad ran against him.
During his presidential campaign, Obama’s rosy rhetoric about healing the persistent partisan and racial divides sounded nice on television and in speeches. But now he was confronting an opposition ready to challenge his every move.
The rest of this article: http://www.bostonglobe.com/news/politics/2013/10/13/the-purple-nation-president-obama-once-envisioned-has-grown-into-hues-deeper-red-and-blue/xxGBjFlwZXTRMp7kEx2F0I/story.html?rss_id=Top-GNP&google_editors_picks=true
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