Obama team sounds utterly naive about Republican tactics and intentions in NYT mag article [View All]

Which I confess I haven't read yet. I'm just quoting David Corn of Mother Jones, who previews it in a disheartening little essay, part of which is below:

http://motherjones.com/politics/2010/10/obama-new-york-times-magazine

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In the piece, Obama aides note that the president and his team underestimated Republican rejectionism. "Perhaps we were naive," White House adviser David Axelrod remarked to Baker. "First, <the president's> always had good relations across party lines. And secondly, I think he believed that in the midst of a crisis you could find partners on the other side of the aisle to help deal with it. I don't think anyone here expected the degree of partisanship that we confronted." Recently departed White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel said, "Part of what <the Republicans> were doing was not just making us grind it out. They were souring the country on the mood of the country."

Obama noted that it was probably a mistake to incorporate Republican-style tax cuts into the stimulus to win over GOPers and that he should have let the Republicans push for such tax cuts, so he could then score political points by accepting them as a bipartisan compromise. In other words, he couldn't deal straight with Republicans because they were not straight shooters. Give them a good-faith compromise at the start, and they'll hit you with a two-by-four.

Some Democrats and progressives have been saying from the start that Obama had failed to recognize this fundamental fact of life. But even as the president and his aides indicate to Baker they've learned this simple lesson the hard way, Obama also signals that…maybe he hasn't.

Obama told Baker that he's optimistic he could find common cause with Republicans after the elections: "It may be that regardless of what happens after this election, they feel more responsible, either because they didn't do as well as they anticipated, and so the strategy of just saying no to everything and sitting on the sidelines and throwing bombes didn't work for them, or they did reasonably well, in which case the American people are going to be looking to them to offer serious proposals and work with me in a serious way."

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