[jjoonathan]

You mean they passed a law specifically blocking the actions the President took: he gave the executive order to close Guantanamo 2 days after the inauguration.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/ClosureOfGuantana...

Sure, he could find a way to push it through, but given the Republicans' historical success at demanding the world from a Democrat with a mandate (e.g. cutting capital gains tax by a third in exchange for childrens' health care), I'm sure their asking price was high.

[spikels]

C'mon it is not the Republicans. At the time that executive order was issued Democrats controlled both houses of Congress.

There is no bad team and good team (i.e. your team) but a rotten sport. Your thinking has fallen victim to their divide and conquer strategy.

[jjoonathan]

My point was not that Dems as a party were blameless, only that Obama could plausibly lie anywhere on the fault spectrum for this issue. You're correct to observe that the real fault lies with the political system that encourages the use of bargaining chips, but the people blaming Obama were the only ones saying otherwise.

I used CHIP as an example of congress opposing a mandate in order to win concessions. The CHIP issue almost certainly had roughly similar party lines, but given a few hours I'm sure I could dig up 10 examples of party X opposing party Y's mandate to extract concessions regardless of whether X==Y or X!=Y, if that would make you happy.

[d23]

And I think your thinking has fallen victim to a false equivalency.