… For the president, it has been a very tough year. Almost nothing that Obama publicly predicted would follow his reelection has come to pass. He had optimistically proclaimed in a Rolling Stone interview that his victory “might break the fever” with Republicans who had declared their top goal was to deny him a second term. With him never again appearing on a ballot, he said then, his hope was that Republicans “might say to themselves, ‘You know what? We’ve lost our way here. We need to refocus on trying to get things done for the American people.’ ”
When CNBC’s John Harwood reminded Obama of that statement in a recent interview, the president clung to the hope that “the majority of Republicans around the country” want to work with him. But he acknowledged that doesn’t seem to include Republicans in Washington. CONT.
George E. Condon Jr., National Journal