Barack Obama likes to portray himself as a post-partisan politician, someone who reaches beyond party. So, it was a blow to him to have to pass the stimulus without a single Republican vote in the House and only three Republican votes in the Senate. His cabinet doesn’t look particularly bi-partisan either. Robert Gates is a hold-over from the Bush administration but he is not even a registered Republican meaning that the only Republican in the Cabinet is the Transportation Secretary Ray La Hood: Bush also chose transportation for the one member of the other party in his Cabinet, Norm Mineta.
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In the New Yorker, though, Hendrik Hertzberg argues that as long as Obama appears to be trying to reach out to Republicans, he wins when they don’t co-operate:
“Fifty years ago, the civil-rights movement understood that nonviolence can be an effective weapon even if—or especially if—the other side refuses to follow suit.
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