to pivot from the preoccupations of its first term, which were cleaning up inherited problems to by that you mean wars? yeah. the president came in thinking his agenda was deal with iraq, afghanistan, global internation international, economic crisis. a second-term president, who has that same responsibility has to deal with new challenges. once he s put those problems behind him. and the obama administration is trying to pivot from that first set to the new challenges. what it the administrations making that pivot tend to discover is that the logic of pulling back is very spending more time on the home front? absolutely. the president s phrase i flation building here at home. that s clearly his number one agenda item. the administrations discover that that makes it harder to get their voice to carry, to get their way, in dealing with ore
instincts. if over and over again they see we re not addressing the core problems we have, eventually they will put in place folks who are serious about getting the work done. let s talk about the problem with the legislative branch. the other day speaker boehner said that we can t get anything done because we have a divided country, a divided congress. but that s the nature of america. they have an aisle down the middle of the senate. an aisle down the middle of the house. they ve always been there. we ve rarely had one party in power for more than a year or two. so we stuck with this as long as we have two parties running our government, they can t compromise. they used to compromise. my argument is in the old days they would compromise and then blame the other party for the parts they didn t like.
periods where our politics gets all boll objectioned up. and sometimes we re nostalgic about the past. i am. i know you are. but the truth of the matter is, when you look at our history, there have been a lot of times when congress gets stuck. but we get through it. and the reason we get through it, ultimately, the american people have pretty good instincts. and if over and over again, they see that we re not addressing the core problems we have, eventually they will put in place folks who are serious about getting the work done. let s talk about the problem with the legislative branch. the other day, speaker boehner said that we can t get anything done because we have a divided country, a divided congress. but that s the nature of america. they have an aisle down the middle of the senate, down the middle of the house. they have always been there. we have rarely had one party in power more than a year or two.
election and not the generation. the solution to that is ultimately what was envisioned by our founders. and what jack kennedy understood as well. and that s the american people. question go through these periods where aur politics gets all bollucks up. the truth is when you look at our history, there s been a lot of times where congress gets stuck. but the reason we get through it is the american people have good instincts. if over and over again they see we re not addressing the core problems we have, eventually they will put in place folks who are serious about getting the work done. let s talk about the problem with the legislative branch. the other day speaker boehner said that we can t get anything
people. you know. we go through these periods where our politics gets all mixed up. and the truth is we re nostalgic about the past. i am. i know you are. but the truth is, when you lack at our history, there have been a lot of times when congress gets stuck. but we get through it. and the reason we get through it is ultimately the american people have pretty good instincts, and if over and over again that we re not addressing the core problems that we have, eventually, they will put in place folks who are serious about getting the work done. let s talk about the problem with the laegs laytive branch the other day speaker boehner said we can t get anything done because we have a divided country, a divided congress. that s the nature of the country. there s an aisle down the center of the house. those aisles have been there.