These people are profoundly missing the point. They seem to be equating a failed attempt to promote bipartisanship with being to blame for the lack of it.
But listen to the President's words. Watch his (not Congress's) legislative tactics. Take note of his ardent if naïve desire to bridge the ideological gap. Obama clearly wishes everyone would take a deep breath, stop with the ad hominem attacks and work together for the common good. If the opposition is going to refuse to do so, however, and in fact will instead ratchet up the rhetoric to truly bizarre/birther/Bolshevik levels, then this says far more about them than about him. The GOP wants to stick its gnarled, clubbed foot out as Obama runs by and then say "See? He couldn't cross the finish line! He's flat on his face! We told you!" Sorry, kids. That's not how it works. You don't get to fulfill your own pathetic prophecy and call it revelation.
After many campaign promises to "change the tone in Washington", George W. Bush's actual words and general mien did nothing to try and soothe the savage beast. His administration instead chose to divide and conquer and wedge and stoke. What made his promises hollow, then, was not that they never came to fruition, but that there was never a good faith effort to make good on them; Bush preferred to shove his foot up the opposition's ass and then piously wonder aloud why it didn't give them pleasure.
The same, for good or for ill, cannot be said for Obama. The end result of his overtures is irrelevant. The road to hell may be paved with good intentions, but for the sake of this argument, it's those intentions that matter. The olive branch appears to be real, whether or not the GOP then grabs that branch and turns it into a switch.
