National Journal: Barack Obama: A Divider, Not a Uniter

As we begin Day 4 of President Obama’s government shutdown, it’s worth looking back and seeing how he has contributed to the acrimonious Washington atmosphere that we’re now mired in.

The National Journal’s Beth Reinhard is out with a piece detailing just how little President Barack Obama has changed the city, despite his lofty promises.

Obama rode a wave of “hope” and “change” in 2008, playing off frustration with Washington and the partisan political games that were the trademark of it.

Yet Reinhard examines the fact that President Obama has contributed most of all to the polarization and gridlock in our nation’s capital.

“Republicans point to a few key moments in which the president’s tone and timing inflicted damage. Only three weeks after a lofty inauguration speech, he ripped Republican critics of his economic stimulus plan at a Democratic retreat in 2009. ‘We’re not going to get relief by turning back to the very same policies that, for the last eight years, doubled the national debt and threw our economy into a tailspin,’ he said. Two years later, he lit into the Republican deficit-reduction plan in a speech, as House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan awkwardly sat in the front row. Last month, just a few hours after the mass shooting at the Washington Navy Yard, the president unloaded on Republicans for failing to agree to a spending plan. ‘Are they really willing to hurt people just to score political points?’ he demanded.

‘Obama’s tendency to impugn Republican motives–instead of attributing conflict to a different view of the federal government’s role or contrasting economic philosophy–has helped erode what little good will was left between the two parties when he took office.”

To put it simply, President Obama does not know how to lead or govern. He can only work in Washington by creating an imaginary straw man then attempting to pummel him in a pre-planned PR blitz.

It’s this type of hostility that has hurt relations with Republicans and this type of intransigence that has caused him to oppose plan after plan to keep the government open—even with piecemeal bills that would provide critical funding for veterans and kids with cancer.

President Obama just hasn’t lived up to his promises of bipartisanship…and now the entire country is paying the price.