These attacks are supposed to show that Obama can’t be pushed around. But, of course, what it really suggests is that Obama’s big theory is bankrupt. You can’t really win with the new style of politics. Sooner or later, you have to play by the conventional rules. ~David Brooks

But the big theory, the idea that “voters are tired of the partisan paralysis of the past 20 years,” is based on a complete misreading of public frustration with the political class.  The frustration with the two parties does not relate to how or whether they do or do not cooperate, but relates instead to what they propose to do and not do.  There hasn’t been “partisan paralysis” during the past 20 years, but all too often collaboration of members of both parties in policies that do not have the support of large parts of the public or that serve narrow interests at odds with the interests of the majority.  There have been a number of fairly significant pieces of legislation moved through Congress and signed into law during the past 20 years, but the public’s frustration with the system comes from the quality of that legislation and the consequences of the policies of at least the last 20 years, especially as it relates to trade, immigration and, to some extent, foreign policy.  Lack of representation, not lack of cooperation or lack of action, is what frustrates the tens of millions of people who would contemplate backing an independent candidate.  Obama gave the wrong diagnosis, and so prescribed the wrong cure: despite some rhetorical maneuvering on trade, Obama stands with the establishment consensus on all those issues where the disconnect between the public and the political class is greatest, and offers the “healing” of post-partisanship while proposing almost entirely the same content in his agenda as any establishment candidate.