Like many in the GOP, Senator Lamar Alexander is baffled as to how a President who is generally regarded by members as nice, amiable, and a likable person can be so clueless and tone deaf when it comes to the actual process of bipartisanship:

“On the big issues, on healthcare, on so-called financial regulation, the stimulus, the White House has been absolutely tone-deaf to bipartisanship,” Alexander said. [snip]

“I have a good, personal relationship with the president. I served with him. I like him,” Alexander said. “But as far as my ability to be involved in his objectives, they're limited.”

The former Tennessee governor did give credit to Obama's education and energy secretaries for working with him on various issues, but said the White House is the problem.

“Either the White House doesn't want to work in a bipartisan way on the big issues or doesn't know how,” he said.

The President has always talked the talk of bipartisanship, but he clearly hasn't walked the walk during his first year in office. Part of the reason, as Alexander notes, is due to process: the President hasn't done a good job of engaging with Republicans in a serious way to hash out compromises at the start of the sausage making process. That's no small deal, especially when the pieces of legislation (like the stimulus, health care, cap and trade, etc) are massive, transformational, and cut straight to core ideological differences between the two parties.

But the other reason is clearly stylistic: Republicans appear tired of Obama's rhetorical and political tricks. He's repeatedly made bipartisanship more difficult by employing straw man arguments and attacking the motives of his opposition. He's stoked the ire of the GOP by saying - untruthfully - that they were offering no solutions, then belatedly acknowledging the GOP did have solutions worth looking at, and then declaring most of those ideas illegitimate and ignoring them. And on a few occasions he's done what he did this past Tuesday when he made a plea for bipartisanship to Republicans during the day, and then turned right around and attacked the GOP before a highly partisan audience that night at a fundraiser for Barbara Boxer in San Francisco.

In fact, Obama made a revealing comment about his view of bipartisanship on Tuesday night. According to the New York Times, Obama related the following to the Democratic crowd about part of his lunch conversation with Republicans regarding the issue of immigration:

“You've got to meet me on solving the problem long-term. It's not enough just to talk about the National Guard down at the border,” Mr. Obama said he told the lawmakers. “You don't even have to meet me halfway. I'll bring most Democrats on these issues. I'm just looking for 8 or 10 of you.”

Notice how Obama frames himself as the bipartisan bridge builder who's willing to travel great political distances - well beyond "halfway" - to reach a compromise with Republicans. Yet in the very next breath Obama reveals he's really only interested in traveling a bare minimum in a quest for bipartisanship.

Obama would argue that Republicans have been the ones feigning bipartisanship while remaining utterly devoted to killing his agenda, and there's obviously some truth to that. But let's face it, when the President cannot win the votes of moderates like Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe on his signature pieces of legislation, whatever he claims to be doing to generate bipartisanship is clearly failing. Furthermore, the President is the one who ran on rising above petty political arguments and bridging the old political divides in the country, which makes his thin-skinned reactions over the past 15 months more surprising and noticeable.

At this point, it's hard to see a political detente in the near future. Even a serious thumping for the President's party in the midterms may not lead to any bipartisan course correction on the part of the White House. It certainly didn't after Massachusetts, and the President still managed a political victory on health care, despite forcing it through on the most narrow, partisan lines imaginable. And the White House continues to cling to the notion that the political anger swirling in the country isn't directed at the President but exists because change isn't coming fast enough:

Americans are increasingly optimistic about the economy, but that brightening outlook hasn't softened their outrage over the country's direction and its political leadership, a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll finds. [snip]

White House adviser David Axelrod says that's not surprising. "There's been a lot of frustrations and grievance building up for years," he says. "For many Americans, it (the recovery) still hasn't touched their lives."

It appears that, regardless of the outcome in November, if Republicans are expecting President Obama to change his political behavior or to chart a more sincerely bipartisan course after November, they're going to be sadly mistaken.

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