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 Obama won the White House in 2008 partially on a promise to
overcome partisan divides in Washington. He has called his failure
to do that, seven years after taking office, a regret.
On the ninth anniversary of his 2007 announcement in Springfield
that he was running for president, Obama addressed Illinois
lawmakers at the state Capitol where he once worked as a state
senator in what he described as a collegial, friendly atmosphere.
"I was able to be part of that here, and yet I couldn’t translate it
the way I wanted to in our politics in Washington," he said.
Obama said reducing the influence of money, making it easier to vote
and ending the way voting districts were drawn politically would
help solve the problem.
"We've got to build a better politics," he said. "When I hear voices
in either party boast of their refusal to compromise as an
accomplishment in and of itself, I'm not impressed."
 Congressional Republicans have said the Democratic president is
often unwilling to work with them to pass legislation.
"“The central premise of the Obama presidency was to unite the
country, and that’s been an unquestionable failure,” Doug Andres, a
spokesman for Republican Speaker of the U.S. House of
Representatives Paul Ryan, said in a statement.
Obama has made clear he views Republican presidential front-runner
Donald Trump's rhetoric as corrosive. Trump, who has called for a
temporary ban on Muslims entering the United States, won the New
Hampshire Republican primary on Tuesday as the parties hold
state-by-state nominating contests for the Nov. 8 election to
succeed Obama.
MICROCOSM
The chamber in which Obama addressed Illinois lawmakers also became
a microcosm of the challenges he was hoping to address.
Democrats stood and clapped when Obama said the country was better
off since he became president. Republicans stayed seated. The
situation was similar to what occurred at his annual State of the
Union addresses in Washington.
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Obama chided both sides, however, and said he believed Republicans
shared some of his values even if they disagreed on how to enact
them. He noted the importance of basic governance such as fixing
roads and passing budgets, a reference to a crisis facing his home
state.
Republican Governor Bruce Rauner has refused to sign a spending plan
for Illinois' 2016 fiscal year without winning Democratic
concessions that would weaken collective bargaining rights for
public-sector unions, impose term limits, freeze property taxes and
make it harder for workers injured on the job to collect damages
from their employers.
Democrats, who control both of Illinois' legislative chambers, have
resisted his demands, setting up a stalemate that has left the
state's public universities and social-service programs starved for
funding. Chicago State University, for example, last week declared a
financial emergency, and furloughs have been imposed at other public
universities.
Obama's trip was aimed both at solidifying his legacy in a familiar
place and making good on a promise to spend his last year working
toward healing partisan wounds.
Shortly after arriving, he stopped at a restaurant he frequented as
a state senator, then shook hands with onlookers outside the Old
State Capitol, where Obama announced his bid for the White House
exactly nine years ago.
(Additional reporting by Dave McKinney in Chicago and Roberta
Rampton in Washington; Editing by Peter Cooney)
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