Just as President Obama prepared to exit office, Chris Cillizza, from the Washington Post, published a critique of the former President’s last two terms. In his post, he focused on his opinion that Obama did not fix politics like he had promised and failed to create a government that worked for everyone.
Cillizza added that Republicans openly discussed their opposition to him and made it somewhat of a political strategy. They believe that if Obama had reached out and made more of an effort to schmooze with Republicans, things might have worked out better.
But many argue that when the Republican party refused to hold hearings for Obama’s Supreme Court nominee, they were disregarding 100 years worth of protocol.
They thought that Republicans wanted to work with Obama, but he wasn’t smart enough to read their signals. But many feel that the press created somewhat of a parallel universe when it came to politics. By the end of Obama’s presidency, the Republican party wasn’t even trying to hide their disapproval. In fact, they openly bragged about their unwillingness to work with the former President.
But Cillizza’s review blamed Obama, saying that he screwed things up and passed up many chances to work with the Republican party to fix things. Others disagree, saying that the media is so quick to blame the victim and categorize the behavior of Republicans as normal.
They argue that, furthermore, Obama should not be blamed for having his agenda obstructed by Republicans and that their radical beliefs should not be downplayed. The media often claims that they are trying to spread the message that both sides are to blame when it comes to the issues the government is facing. But they seemed to target Obama from day one of his presidency.
In fact, shortly after he was sworn in as President in January 2009, the Los Angeles Times posted an article accusing him of not immediately bringing in a new “post-partisan era.”
But perhaps this is because the Republican party would not allow it. At every turn, Republicans seemed to defy historic norms whenever they could. This was evident through the sequester obstruction, government shutdown obstruction, paid leave obstruction, cabinet nominee obstruction, Hurricane Sandy relief obstruction, the 2013 gun bill obstruction, and so many others.
In fact, the 2013 gun bill was favored by nearly 90 percent of the public, including Republicans. But Republican senators would not budge, simply because they didn’t want to help the President accomplish something he wanted. And in this case, the media was quick to blame Obama for the new bill not working out.
In another article posted by the Washington Post in 2012, Thomas Mann and Norm Ornstein wrote that, in their 40 years of studying the government, they had never seen it so dysfunctional. They added that, in their opinion, the root of the problem was within the Republican party. But once again, the media disregarded this analysis, simply because it wasn’t the story they wanted to tell.