My column yesterday focused on the impact of deep cultural and partisan polarization on the ability of the president to get things done:
Look. There is a real and vital role for political opposition, and a robust, healthy, even vicious critique of Obama’s policies and a clear alternative to them is not just legitimate but essential for a democracy to work. But these statements from key players at the very top of the Republican party do not reflect this. They reflect a partisanship that seeks to impugn the core motives of the president, implying that he is, in fact, something alien and destructive to America, and must be opposed in everything he does, whatever it is, because his success would mean the end of America itself. It is not a declaration of opposition; it’s a declaration of war.
That is why in the week before Obama’s inauguration the most influential voice on the right, Rush Limbaugh, openly said he hoped the president would fail. That is why, in the first real test of the opposition, Obama’s stimulus package with vast tax cuts in the middle of the steepest downturn in memory garnered zero Republican votes. Zero. That’s why a health insurance reform plan that is in many ways more conservative than the Republican leader Mitt Romney’s Massachusetts pilot, a reform that cut the deficit, ruled out a public option, and gave the health insurance and drug companies millions of new private sector clients, won zero Republican support in the Senate and one, yes, one, Republican vote in the House.
Now recall Bush’s first signature proposal, his massive 2001 tax cut. Unlike Obama, he came to office with fewer votes than his opponent. In the wake of that election, 12 Democratic senators voted for Bush’s campaign promise, and 28 Democrats followed suit in the House. McCain actually voted against his own party on this critical first test. Now look at him. That is a sign of how partisanship and polarisation have only deepened since 2000, and Obama’s attempt to overcome it has simply fallen on barren ground. The response of the Republicans to Obama’s open hand has been pretty close to that of the Iranian junta: a clenched fist.