DarkHelmet wrote:... I haven't seen the strong bipartisan leadership required to solve these issues. FDR inherited a bigger mess. Lincoln probably inherited the biggest mess. Those men rose to the occasion. I don't expect Obama to be the next Lincoln or FDR. He has a stubborn GOP opposition that wants to see him fail. If he can't push past that opposition and lead, we need someone that can. ...
The President can be as bi-partisan as he likes: faced with a stubborn Republican Party who are bound hand and foot by Tea-Party generated commitments, he can't do much to shift them towards a position where compromise (rather than simply doing what his opponents want) is a possibility.
The US Constitution is designed to promote compromise and consensus between opposing groups, but if one party is content to see the government suffer a train-wreck rather than compromise on getting anything but its own way, a president does not have a set of magic buttons to press to 'lead' the way out of that.
Newsweek remarks:
If you are a Republican who wants to see your party return to the center, reelecting Obama is the single most effective thing you can do. Look what Reagan’s success did to the Democrats: it gave us the centrist Bill Clinton. A future centrist Republican president is out there somewhere—but electing Romney-Ryan would strand him or her further out in the wilderness.
There seems a degree of sense there. The whole article is well worth reading.