Americans voted strongly for Obama with his promises of hope and change and post-partisan progress, but as president, he quickly found that not even he could get Democrats and Republicans to compromise.
It follows that politics becomes more partisan, and progress is stifled.
The debate is beginning to sound more and more like the politics President Obama decried in his campaign — partisan, mean and progress-free.
"The American people want to see Washington put aside partisan differences and make progress on jobs," Mr. Gibbs said.
"The American people want to see Washington put aside partisan differences and make progress on jobs, and today the Senate took one important step forward in doing that," he said.
"Small businesses are the engine of private sector job creation, and the president will fight against any attempts by the partisan minority to block progress on legislation that helps our economic recovery," a spokeswoman, Amy Brundage, said.
It included $13bn for clean energy plus independent, non-partisan processes for measuring progress, setting targets and evaluating the potential of renewable energy.
Redistricting almost always leads to fierce partisan battles that can paralyze progress on other bills.
And Senator Jim DeMint was egregiously at fault in blocking the nominee's progress with a partisan, red-herring warning that the Obama administration was intent on unionizing airport security workers.
Killings of trade union members in Colombia, though, have concerned some officials in Washington, where the issue, combined with partisan disagreements, has held up progress on a wide-reaching trade agreement.
His White House has gotten bogged down in an even deeper partisan morass that has ground political progress to a halt.
