Barack Obama Quotes

Redistricting and a broken, polarized Congress have made it tough to be a moderate in Congress.

While I have worked hard to bring folks to the middle to craft common-sense solutions to the many problems that confront our nation, Washington is mired in gridlock, gamesmanship and constant partisan bickering.

So the - the part of the problem is not just the rhetoric. It's the fact that we - we're so polarized in what we've done to each other as parties over the last thirty years in redistricting that it's very, very hard to overcome your own constituencies and move to the middle.

One difficulty in making the Senate work the way it was intended is that America's electorate is increasingly divided into red and blue states, with lawmakers representing just one color or the other.

We need less bipartisanship in Congress.

I think partisanship is probably the greatest problem in Washington, D.C.

We've come to be consumed by a 24-hour, slash-and-burn, negative ad, bickering, small-minded politics that doesn't move us forward.

The country has sorted itself ideologically into the two political parties, and those partisan attachments have hardened in recent years. It will take an extraordinary event and act of leadership to break this partisan divide. I thought 9/11 might provide such an opportunity, but it was not seized.

Our politicians don't say anything anymore: they just refute and assert.

When elected officials and others contribute to a climate and culture that fosters hyper-partisanship, we've got to blow the whistle.

I think that what is truly unfortunate is when an entire party makes a decision that they're going to block every single thing that a president wants to accomplish. It's very - it's very hard to get anything done in those circumstances.

Everywhere I go - from Main Street to Wall Street - people ask, 'What's happened to our political system? Why can't Washington folks work together?'

My message of common-sense solutions is resonating with people. People around the country are starting to know who I am and starting to identify me with solutions, not rhetoric.

We can't allow ourselves to descend down the rabbit hole of unbridled partisanship for partisan sake.

And I'm here to tell you, the reaction that I'm getting around the country, people are sick and tired of this word in Washington, compromise. This is why nothing ever gets done.

Like most Americans, I feel disgusted when we see people make decisions based on party politics rather than a solution that is best for the country.

Americans are sick and tired of political gamesmanship.

Politics is not longer about argument of discussions it is about trying to put your opponents into the box of the untouchables.

Has Washington become so dysfunctional that even when we all agree on something, we can’t get it done?

In an ideological, polarized political environment, people see the reality that they want to see.

My Republican compatriots do not feel that people ought to work with Democrats across the aisle—Compromise is a bad word.

In politics, good gets better; bad gets worse.

Talking heads will chatter, argue, and rant on TV and in the houses of Congress but that's all they will do. Weeks and months will go by in which the crowning achievement of Congress may be little more than perhaps passing a bill to declare National Eat Your Spinach Week (sponsored, of course, by the Spinach Growers of America).

The middle in Congress is gone now. That is where we got most things done.

Overall, Congress is dysfunctional, partisan, and polarized, and it isn’t getting anything done. We need commissions to break out of divisive partisanship.