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...Rather than working to find more compromise in Congress, which would necessitate choosing different issues and agreeing to much more modest solutions, Obama is sidestepping Congress with more aggressive, more polarizing actions. To put it another way, he's prioritizing the liberal policy outcomes he promised in the 2008 campaign above the compromise-oriented political approach he promised in the 2008 campaign.

Obama's new strategy with Congress: stop trying to convince them of anything

Given Obama's actions, you might expect Congress to have devolved into yet more partisan rancor and paralysis. But over the past year, the opposite has happened. Democrats and Republicans shocked everyone by coming up with a fix to Medicare's broken payments formula. The Senate agreed on a replacement to No Child Left Behind. There have been no government shutdowns or debt ceiling disasters. And Republicans have even been willing to make some common ground with Obama on trade authority.

Evidence of Congress's relative productivity can be found elsewhere, too. The Bipartisan Policy Center keeps up a "Healthy Congress Index" that "tracks key metrics like substantive days in session, amendments offered, and bills reported out of committee." Of late, Congress is looking a whole lot healthier.

Which, in a way, makes a twisted kind of sense. Obama is a polarizing figure, and his efforts to pass legislation were part of what was polarizing Congress. Obama eventually realized he couldn't solve a problem that was created by his very presence. And so he's more or less left Congress to do its own thing — particularly since Republicans won the Senate in 2014.

Now that they've stopped arguing so much over Obama, both sides in Congress have more time and more inclination to work with each other...

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Originally posted by kpo:

Quote:

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...Rather than working to find more compromise in Congress, which would necessitate choosing different issues and agreeing to much more modest solutions, Obama is sidestepping Congress with more aggressive, more polarizing actions. To put it another way, he's prioritizing the liberal policy outcomes he promised in the 2008 campaign above the compromise-oriented political approach he promised in the 2008 campaign.

Obama's new strategy with Congress: stop trying to convince them of anything

Given Obama's actions, you might expect Congress to have devolved into yet more partisan rancor and paralysis. But over the past year, the opposite has happened. Democrats and Republicans shocked everyone by coming up with a fix to Medicare's broken payments formula. The Senate agreed on a replacement to No Child Left Behind. There have been no government shutdowns or debt ceiling disasters. And Republicans have even been willing to make some common ground with Obama on trade authority.

Evidence of Congress's relative productivity can be found elsewhere, too. The Bipartisan Policy Center keeps up a "Healthy Congress Index" that "tracks key metrics like substantive days in session, amendments offered, and bills reported out of committee." Of late, Congress is looking a whole lot healthier.

Which, in a way, makes a twisted kind of sense. Obama is a polarizing figure, and his efforts to pass legislation were part of what was polarizing Congress. Obama eventually realized he couldn't solve a problem that was created by his very presence. And so he's more or less left Congress to do its own thing — particularly since Republicans won the Senate in 2014.

Now that they've stopped arguing so much over Obama, both sides in Congress have more time and more inclination to work with each other...

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More at - http://www.vox.com/2015/7/21/9007733/obama-second-term

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