President Obama sat down for an interview with The New Republic recently and broke the mold for Presidential honesty, holding court on the current state of affairs, from guns and skeet shooting at Camp David to college football, Syria, and hopes and dreams for America finally cutting the crap before we run out of Earth to scorch, but notably, he had this to say about the idea that "both sides" are equally to blame for the gridlock and dysfunction:
FF: When you talk about Washington, oftentimes you use it as a way to describe this type of dysfunction. But it's a very broad brush. It can seem as if you're apportioning blame not just to one party, but to both parties—
Well, no, let me be clear. There's not a—there's no equivalence there. In fact, that's one of the biggest problems we've got in how folks report about Washington right now, because I think journalists rightly value the appearance of impartiality and objectivity. And so the default position for reporting is to say, "A plague on both their houses." On almost every issue, it's, "Well, Democrats and Republicans can't agree"—as opposed to looking at why is it that they can't agree. Who exactly is preventing us from agreeing?
And I want to be very clear here that Democrats, we've got a lot of warts, and some of the bad habits here in Washington when it comes to lobbyists and money and access really goes to the political system generally. It's not unique to one party. But when it comes to certain positions on issues, when it comes to trying to do what's best for the country, when it comes to really trying to make decisions based on fact as opposed to ideology, when it comes to being willing to compromise, the Democrats, not just here in this White House, but I would say in Congress also, have shown themselves consistently to be willing to do tough things even when it's not convenient, because it's the right thing to do. And we haven't seen that same kind of attitude on the other side.
Until Republicans feel that there's a real price to pay for them just saying no and being obstructionist, you'll probably see at least a number of them arguing that we should keep on doing it. It worked for them in the 2010 election cycle, and I think there are those who believe that it can work again. I disagree with them, and I think the cost to the country has been enormous.
The President is far too kind, but spot on.