Governmental Bipartisanship

In his State of the Union address Wednesday night, President Obama made a direct attack at the members of the GOP sitting on the right side of the auditorium. He gave them a promise that he would start having more frequent meetings with the GOP leaders to talk about issues, and relationships between political parties. Today, President Obama was in Baltimore talking to some leaders of the House Republicans while they were at there retreat. The subject of the talks was just this - bipartisanship in politics. While at the retreat, Obama attacked the Republicans for a "politics of no" that had developed within their ranks; this meant that Obama was pointing out his opinion that many Republicans were just saying "no" to some decisions just because they could, just because of party politics. The Republican countered by telling Obama that even though he spoke of bipartisanship and cooperation, he himself often pushed liberal ideas without really listening to what the GOP had to say. It was in this way that the President and House Republicans jabbed each other in a respectful, civil way. After all, being respectful and civil is what bipartisanship is all about right? If anything is going to get accomplished in this time of need for America, one party cannot either completely dominate or completely hinder the political agenda. The parties are not about to merge completely - far from it. However, all that it takes is a few members from each party listening to and caring about the other side's opinion. If interest is shown, then civility will be shown. This idea applies to the president himself as well. The link to the article is here.