Afternoon Must-Read: Ezra Klein: In 2014 Obama Picked Getting Things Done Over Fixing US Politics

…abandoning… his 2008 campaign. It was the year that he accepted that the only way to bring the policy changes he had promised was to abandon the political ideals that first got him elected…. The 2008 Democratic primary was, as Mark Schmitt wrote, a ‘theory of change’ primary. The different candidates didn’t disagree all that much about what to do. They disagreed about how to get it done.

Hillary Clinton’s argument was that she best understood the conflictual nature of American politics: she had fought these battles before and so she was best positioned to win them in the future. Change would come through mastery of the old politics. Obama’s argument was just the opposite: the conflictual nature of politics, he said, was the product of the people who knew no politics other than conflict. He would win the battle by ending it… ending the partisan divisions and moneyed interests that had broken American politics…. Obama pushed more change through the political system than any serious observer expected…. But he didn’t do all this by fixing American politics…. He’s one of the most polarizing presidents since the advent of polling.

There isn’t much Obama could have done about this. Party polarization is bigger than any one president. When the Senate Minority Leader says publicly, as Mitch McConnell did, that ‘the single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president,’ then it’s a safe bet that legislative cooperation isn’t forthcoming…