Mr. Pres­id­ent,



We thought you were dif­fer­ent, but you turned out to be like all the oth­ers. You prom­ised hope and change, but we trust gov­ern­ment even less than be­fore. You offered a new brand of post-par­tis­an gov­ern­ing, but the red states and blue states are farther apart than ever.

Wash­ing­ton was a mess when you ar­rived in Janu­ary of 2009, but by break­ing your prom­ises and, frankly, our hearts, you made it worse.



You vowed to ban lob­by­ists from the White House only to sneak them in through loop­holes.

You barred cor­por­ate dona­tions to the first in­aug­ur­a­tion but let the spe­cial in­terest money rain down the second time around. You even learned to love su­per PACs.

How could you?

Signed,

Hope­less and Changed (for the worse)





“The Obama brand was presen­ted to Amer­ic­an pub­lic as a new and uni­fy­ing force in Amer­ic­an polit­ics, but he’s turned out to be an ab­so­lutely con­ven­tion­al politi­cian,” said Re­pub­lic­an con­sult­ant Kev­in Mad­den, who ad­vised Mitt Rom­ney’s un­suc­cess­ful pres­id­en­tial cam­paigns in 2008 and 2012. “He’s been very di­vis­ive.”

This week’s gov­ern­ment shut­down rep­res­ents a new low in Wash­ing­ton, re­in­for­cing how little gets done and every­one hates each oth­er. And while polls show that Re­pub­lic­ans in Con­gress still get more of the blame, Amer­ic­ans are in­creas­ingly point­ing the fin­ger at the Oval Of­fice.

A re­cent Bloomberg sur­vey found that 40 per­cent blame the GOP for what’s wrong in Wash­ing­ton, while 38 per­cent blame the pres­id­ent and con­gres­sion­al Demo­crats. Back in Feb­ru­ary, Obama had a nine-point edge over Re­pub­lic­ans and in­de­pend­ents were evenly di­vided over who was re­spons­ible. Now, 42 per­cent of in­de­pend­ents fault with Obama and his al­lies in Con­gress, while 34 per­cent blame Re­pub­lic­ans on Cap­it­ol Hill.

The latest CNN poll found a sim­il­ar trend, with the per­cent­age who blame con­gres­sion­al Re­pub­lic­ans for a gov­ern­ment shut­down down five points and the per­cent who blame Obama up three points.

“At some point when your team is los­ing, you don’t blame the in­di­vidu­al play­ers. You blame the coach,” said Re­pub­lic­an lob­by­ist Vin Weber, a seni­or fel­low at the Humphrey School of Pub­lic Af­fairs at the Uni­versity of Min­nesota. “There’s a flaw in lead­er­ship, wheth­er it’s be­cause of ideo­logy or in­ex­per­i­ence.”

Per­haps Obama’s biggest fail­ing has been his in­ab­il­ity to build re­la­tion­ships and make deals on Cap­it­ol Hill—a short­com­ing in sharp re­lief dur­ing the on­go­ing de­bate over a health care law that didn’t win a single Re­pub­lic­an vote. Even Demo­crat­ic mem­bers com­plain they get short shrift from a de­tached White House and that Obama’s cru­sade for the con­tro­ver­sial health care law laid the ground­work for the rise of an in­transigent tea party.

Long­time lob­by­ist Charlie Black noted that it was Vice Pres­id­ent Joe Biden who reached a last-minute agree­ment with Sen­ate Minor­ity Lead­er Mitch Mc­Con­nell to avoid the so-called fisc­al cliff at the start of this year.

“The pres­id­ent wasted 17 months, and in one week­end the old pros made a deal,” Black said. “All the pres­id­ent knows how to do is cam­paign and at­tack.”

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.

“I was ac­tu­ally hope­ful that some­how he would change the en­vir­on­ment, but in­stead he ex­acer­bated an already per­il­ous situ­ation,” said former Sen. Norm Cole­man, R-Minn., chair­man of the board of the Amer­ic­an Ac­tion Net­work. “He offered the greatest op­por­tun­ity and the greatest prom­ise, and if you look at the dis­tance from the prom­ise to where we’ve des­cen­ded, that says it all.”

In fair­ness to Obama, few Re­pub­lic­ans were will­ing to give him a chance. The re­mark that seemed to en­cap­su­late the GOP’s all-con­sum­ing hos­til­ity came from Mc­Con­nell, who told Na­tion­al Journ­al in 2010: “The single most im­port­ant thing we want to achieve is for Pres­id­ent Obama to be a one-term pres­id­ent.”

Obama’s former deputy press sec­ret­ary, Bill Bur­ton, said it’s im­possible to reach com­prom­ises with tea-party con­ser­vat­ives seek­ing con­trol of the Re­pub­lic­an Party.

“There’s a false idea that if the pres­id­ent spent more time play­ing golf with [House Speak­er] John Boehner or hav­ing cock­tails with [Sen.] Ted Cruz that all this an­im­os­ity would be papered over,” Bur­ton said. “There have been no will­ing part­ners.”

Who do you think broke Wash­ing­ton? Tell us here.