In today's Washington, the two parties have a hard time even agreeing to disagree.
That was the grim picture on New Year's Day in a capital still tied in knots over how to find a deficit-reduction deal, despite a full year's advance warning that one was absolutely, positively essential by year's end.
Even when the contours of a potential big deal were possible to see weeks ago, the path to compromise proved too hard for President Barack Obama and Republican House Speaker John Boehner.
When the two sides lowered their sights to seek a more modest deficit-reduction deal, there still was no solution in sight—until time ran out on the year 2012. Then Republicans and Democrats in the Senate decided to put aside the things they couldn't possibly agree on to pass a relatively narrow tax bill that included items each side could at least live with. But for most of Tuesday, even that minimalist agreement was in peril of collapsing in the House before finally passing just about 11 p.m., and only after all sides expressed their unhappiness with it. All of which must leave many Americans asking a simple question: Why is this so hard?
There are multiple reasons that even what seems easy is hard in Washington right now. The problems start, of course, with the basic polarization of not just Congress but the country. America is in an unusual political state, in which the two parties are quite evenly divided in power, but far apart ideologically.
Click here to see the entire articly by Gerad F. Seib in the Wall Street Journal
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