Not like '94-
"Clinton had to deal with a unified GOP Congress. And he had to find a way to win re-election. The politics of balancing the budget forced him to give some ground, but public fealty to Medicare buttressed Clinton during the shutdown showdowns. On welfare, Clinton knew signing a bill before the 1996 election would defang the issue for Republicans and boost his own centrist credentials.
The tenacity and unity of the GOP congressional majority, the centrist inclinations of Mr. Clinton, and the political imperative of re-election created a unique mix of opportunities, which both sides seized when no better alternative could be found. Clinton and the Republicans both needed to cut deals. And they did.

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President Obama needs to cut no deals because unlike Bill Clinton in 1994, he has no looming re-election campaign. These Republicans are not as organized, energized and unified as the GOP majority of 1995. Mr. Obama doesn't have the centrist political heritage Mr. Clinton brought to Washington. He also doesn't have Mr. Clinton's facility with or love of legislative maneuvering and deal-making.
For their part, Boehner and McConnell lack their own Contract With America. Here's a brief survey of their stated goals, however.
- The biggest GOP goal--repealing the Affordable Care Act--is impossible. Obama will veto it. Ditto eliminating the law's individual mandate.
- The Keystone XL pipeline is legislation that has yet to move by itself as a single bill that can attract a filibuster-proof majority. It might. Then Obama will have a veto choice to make. But no one in Washington or the country will mistake Keystone for balancing the budget or welfare reform.
- Corporate tax reform offers the biggest chance of a legislative bell-ringer. But Obama, McConnell and Boehner still dance around the specifics. There is no unified GOP position on the contours of tax reform or using any revenue derived for infrastructure projects, Obama's bottom-line demand.
The other painful reality that separates then from now is the on-going battle against terrorism. It's costly and requires constant White House and congressional funding, attention and cohesion. This was not a necessity under divided Clinton-era government. It is now. Cobbling together a new Authorization to Use Military Force in Iraq and Syria--a goal Obama has laid before Congress--will be an early and important test of war-fight bipartisanship neither Clinton nor Gingrich had to confront.
Lastly, Congress is different. Moderates existed in both parties in 1995. Southern Democrats still populated the House and Senate. Notheastern Republicans were more common. The era of Red State and Blue State politics was dawning. Now it is entrenched. That tends to prioritize partisan voting patterns over deal-making and policy innovation. This is not a new story. It has in part been one of Obama's biggest frustrations with the House GOP majority. And vice versa.
Both sides see each other as entrenched, unimaginative and indifferent. Activists in both parties reinforce this behavior, while moderate voters tend to swing--with equal measures of fatigue and frustration--between parties. The public swung toward Republicans in 1994, two years after Ross Perot's independent run for the White House. Then it swung back to the Democrats in 2006, who reinforced their majority in 2008 before the public swung yet again toward Republicans in 2010 and kept moving in that direction on Tuesday.
No one knows what Obama and the new GOP-dominated Congress will achieve. But it should be abundantly clear that the Clinton-Gingrich era can't show them the way forward. The gravitational pull of party, politics, policy and personalities could not be more different.
You don't need to be Rand Paul to see that."
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