Obama has shown zero interest in bipartisan reform

◼ Obama blows off deals with GOP, creating era of bad feelings - Michael Barone/Washington Examiner @michaelbarone

Second-term presidencies are an opportunity for bipartisan compromise. The institutional stars are in alignment to address long-range problems not amenable in other circumstances....

Like Reagan, Clinton and Bush, Barack Obama has at times acknowledged the long-term unsustainability of current programs. The tax code has again become encrusted with preferences once again, Social Security is still facing stress and Medicare threatens to gobble up larger and larger shares of the nation's economy.

Entitlements threaten to squeeze out domestic spending that Democrats favor. And, as former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta argued in the Wall Street Journal, the sequester cuts are hobbling the military as foreign threats increase.

But in his second term Obama has shown zero interest in bipartisan reform. He campaigns on mini-issues like the minimum wage and patches up Obamacare with executive orders that put him on the cusp of ignoring his constitutional duty to faithfully execute the laws.

◼ Examiner Editorial: Obama, Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi are America's great dividers - Washington Examiner EDITORIAL

Harry Reid's hometown newspaper - the Las Vegas Review-Journal - recently offered an important observation: “As majority leader of the U.S. Senate, Harry Reid is supposed to lead. The Nevada Democrat should be focused on the concerns of Americans and on shaping debate on important matters of national interest. Sen. Reid is doing neither. In fact, he's working so hard to ignore the taxpaying public's priorities that he has become a parody of his position.”

...Then there is Nancy Pelosi. This statement appears on the House Minority Leader’s web site: “Democrats are building an economic approach that lifts every American, not just the privileged few. The average American CEO earns more before lunchtime in one day than a minimum wage worker earns all year. This is not the kind of America we want our children to grow up in. Today's economic challenges result from years of Republican inaction and failed policies that have left more and more Americans behind.” In Pelosi’s world, Democrats are for “every American,” while Republicans favor only “the privileged few.”