WASHINGTON — President Obama’s urgent call on Tuesday for fundamental changes in the nation’s political system — coupled with the angry tone of the Republican presidential primary campaign — represents grim evidence that the bitter partisanship that has defined his tenure has reached deep into American democracy.More.
Mr. Obama devoted the closing words of his final State of the Union address to a desperate plea to “fix our politics” and allow the public and elected officials to engage in “rational, constructive debates.”
But who is really responsible for the nasty turn in civic life? Democrats and Republicans say both sides are.
“I think there’s probably a lot of us to blame,” Denis McDonough, the White House chief of staff, said on Wednesday during a breakfast with reporters. “It’s the structure of our campaigns, the structure of our districts, what’s happening in terms of news media, that is to say that you can select your news media the same way that you select your neighborhood or your church.”
“You can end up in an echo chamber unless you aggressively work to get out of that,” Mr. McDonough added.
Just as Mr. Obama on Tuesday acknowledged his own failure in curbing the rancor and distrust between the two parties after entering office with a pledge to do just that, top officials on both sides of the political divide acknowledged culpability in fostering the hostile climate that has left many Americans turned off and cynical about politics even as the country prepares to choose Mr. Obama’s successor.
In the Republican response to the president, Nikki R. Haley, the governor of South Carolina, also conceded that Republicans must try not to point the finger only at Democrats.
“We need to be honest with each other, and with ourselves,” she said. “While Democrats in Washington bear much responsibility for the problems facing America today, they do not bear it alone. There is more than enough blame to go around.
“We as Republicans need to own that truth. We need to recognize our contributions to the erosion of the public trust in America’s leadership. We need to accept that we’ve played a role in how and why our government is broken.”
The two parties have spent much of the Obama era trying to make the other take responsibility for the dysfunction of the government, but both have played roles...
I don't believe the president's sincere. He's been the most deliberately polarizing president in memory. And the Democrats openly practice the politics of personal destruction and have been for decades. The public needs to elect a government capable of sidelining the far-left demons who've implanted deceit and rancor across the land.
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