News Cut: February 7, 2009 Archive

Who needs bipartisanship?

Posted at 11:23 AM on February 7, 2009 by Bob Collins (6 Comments)
Filed under: Politics

Nate Silver, the statistics guru who migrated from baseball to politics and runs the site FiveThirtyEight.com, notes that Barack Obama's approval ratings have dropped and comes up with three things the president appears to have learned.

It's #3 that may be the most signfiicant, because it's less about him and more about us:

3. The benefits of "bipartisanship" are dubious. The public says they want bipartisanship, and a large majority of the public believes that Obama acted in a bipartisan fashion during the stimulus debate. And yet, his approval ratings fell significantly during this period.

There are, obviously, a lot of factors to keep in balance here, but more than anything else the public seems to be seeking strong leadership from Obama; they don't want him to be deferential to either Congressional Democrats or Congressional Republicans.

So, are we done with the whole "working together" thing?