As they prepare to wage political war against President Obama, the potential 2012 Republican candidates are doing everything they can to draw sharp distinctions with him.
But Mr. Obama isn’t cooperating.
Rather than emphasize his differences with potential Oval Office rivals or Republican adversaries on Capitol Hill, the president is taking every opportunity he can to embrace members of the other party as co-conspirators in his efforts to confront the country’s challenges.
According to Mr. Obama, the two parties have cooperated — or are showing signs of being willing to work together — on education reform, tax cuts, energy security, economic growth and potential changes to an entitlement system that has become a drain on the nation’s budget.
“I am proud of the commitment by Democrats and Republicans in Congress to fix No Child Left Behind,” Mr. Obama said Monday at a Virginia middle school.
Two weeks ago, at a fund-raiser in Miami, he noted that “I’m proud that Democrats and Republicans joined forces in December to cut taxes for every American.”
And at a meeting of the National Governor’s Association, he spoke optimistically about confronting the rising costs of Medicare and Medicaid, saying that “I think that’s something that Democrats and Republicans should be able to agree on.”
He’s also heaped special praise — tinged with just a bit of sarcasm — on Mitt Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts (for his health care plan) and Jon Huntsman, the former governor of Utah, for serving as Mr. Obama’s ambassador to China. Both men are considering a bid for president in 2012.
The logic behind Mr. Obama’s approach appears to be rooted in the belief that voters — and especially independents — are looking for evidence that politicians in Washington are working together on problems rather than content to live with an unending stalemate.
In a cabinet meeting the day after the midterm elections in November, Mr. Obama said that that was the message he had received from the drubbing his party took. Voters, he said, are “concerned about making sure that taxpayer money is not wasted, and they want to change the tone here in Washington, where the two parties are coming together and focusing on the people’s business as opposed to scoring political points.”
The change in the president’s rhetoric since then has been striking.
In the weeks before the election, Mr. Obama hardly missed an opportunity to suggest that it was Republicans who had driven the American economy into a ditch. “Have you noticed when you want to go forward, what do you do with your car?” he would repeatedly ask. “You put it in D. When you want to go backwards, what do you do? You put it in R. That’s not a coincidence.”
Except for one fund-raiser on Nov. 5, Mr. Obama has not said the word “ditch” in public since then.
In addition to appealing to some voters, the bipartisan rhetoric from Mr. Obama may be an attempt to disarm his potential 2012 rivals and Republicans on Capitol Hill. In Miami this month, Mr. Obama stood shoulder-to-shoulder with Jeb Bush, the former governor of Florida, to promote education reforms.
“it’s time we came together — just like Jeb and I are doing today — coming from different parties but we come together not as Democrats or Republicans, as Americans, to lift up all of our schools,” he said.
Not everything is sweetness and light, of course. Mr. Obama and the Capitol Hill Republicans remain at loggerheads over the current year’s budget. And there’s no clear indication of how the two sides are going to reach agreement on raising the nation’s debt ceiling later this year.
The president will also need to shift into a more adversarial mode as the election grows closer. Even as his campaign preached hope and optimism in 2008, Mr. Obama’s victory against Senator John McCain of Arizona was built on drawing a clear contrast between the two men.
It may be that Mr. Obama can put off that kind of sharp-edged campaign rhetoric for several months. It seems unlikely he will have a serious primary challenger, and that will allow him to appear somewhat above the fray while the Republicans battle among themselves.
But already, his campaign operatives are beginning to travel the country, hat-in-hand, looking for donations from wealthy supporters. And his finance operation will soon be asking for donations from the millions of less-wealthy supporters who contributed a few dollars in 2008.
Both groups will be looking for contrasts, not just mushy expressions of cooperation.
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