Obama met with bipartisan congressional leadership early in 2009. Bob Woodward reports in The Price of Politics that Eric Cantor (R., Va.) handed him a list of Republican economic proposals. Not one of those proposals was included in the stimulus bill. At the health care summit in 2010, congressional Republicans suggested a variety of ways to improve the American health care system: for example competition through a national insurance marketplace, malpractice reform, and ending the tax penalty against individuals who buy insurance. Not one of those ideas was included in the health care bill.

For two years, the House Republicans have passed a budget that at the very least is an opening bid in a good-faith negotiation over spending and taxes. For two years, that budget has died in the Senate. The president says the House proposal is “antithetical to our entire history.” Then he castigates the Republicans for their “tendency to shoot first and aim later” and calls for civil debate.

This is the broken and anxiety-ridden world Barack Obama has made. Our adversaries are stronger. America and her allies are weaker.