Drawing another red line, Obama is the cause of the polarization he condemns

I have written before about how President Obama never seems to be able to deliver a speech without attacking Republicans in the most petty, divisive, and mean-spirited way. Yesterday, we saw another great example of this tendency. Giving a speech on the fifth anniversary of the financial crisis, Mr Obama said:

The problem is ... Republicans in Congress don’t seem to be focused on how to grow the economy and build the middle class. ... The sequester makes it harder to do what’s required to boost wages for American workers, because the economy is still slack. So if Republicans want the economy to grow faster, create more jobs faster, they should want to get rid of it. It’s irresponsible to keep it in place. ... After all the progress that we’ve made over these last four and a half years, the idea of reversing that progress because of an unwillingness to compromise or because of some ideological agenda is the height of irresponsibility. ... [A]re some of these folks really so beholden to one extreme wing of their party that they're willing to tank the entire economy just because they can't get their way on this issue? ... Are they really willing to hurt people just to score political points? ... Let's stop the threats. Let's stop the political posturing.

So, Republicans are "the problem," they are "irresponsible," they are "unwilling to compromise," they are motivated by an "ideological agenda," they are "beholden to extreme ideas," they "want to hurt people," their activities are "threatening" and amount to nothing more than "political posturing." The only thing that's missing here is a sentence or two blaming George Bush for the train wreck of the first five years of the Obama Administration.

The President frittered away the last month with his ineffectual meddling in Syria. We are now pushing up against the debt ceiling. The government is set to run out of borrowing authority in mid-October. It has been known for months that this was going to happen. And yet, at the very moment when time is running out and the President should be seeking to work together with Republicans in the House to find a compromise solution to America's budget and debt problems, Mr Obama instead chooses to launch a virulent, partisan attack on them. How can the President possibly think that his words will encourage and motivate Republicans to work together with him?

But the President made it clear in his speech that he has no intention of working together with Republicans, instead drawing a new red line:

[I]n case there's any confusion, I will not negotiate over whether or not America keeps its word and meets its obligations. I will not negotiate over the full faith and credit of the United States.

If Republicans are unwilling to compromise, then, they are irresponsible and beholden to extreme ideas. If the President, on the other hand, is unwilling to negotiate, then we are somehow supposed to believe that this is not partisan inflexibility, but rather a principled stand.

Your pious sanctimoniousness grows tiresome, Mr President. You are willing to negotiate with Vlad Putin and Bashar al-Assad, but not with the leader of the House of Representatives, who a couple of weeks ago was one of the few American politicians, Republican or Democrat, who supported your hare-brained proposal to bomb Syria.

As I wrote before, Mr Obama is simply not a statesman. For years now, as the economy has stagnated under his stewardship and more and more people have left the workforce, the President has done little more than blame everyone else for the malaise. He seems to be congenitally incapable of rising above this "blame game." He simply cannot stop himself from demonizing and alienating the very people whose cooperation he needs. Instead, it is always attack, attack, attack. It is demeaning to the office of the Presidency. And it is the chief cause of the very political divisions and polarization that the President so vehemently and self-righteously condemns.

It is not Rush Limbaugh who is tearing this country apart, Mr Obama, it is you.