Ezra Klein: At this point according to the polls, you are the most polarizing president really since
we began polling, but before you the record was set by George W. Bush, and before George
W. Bush the record was set by Bill Clinton.
Barack Obama: Well, there are a couple of things that in my mind, at least, contribute to our politics
being more polarized than people actually are.
The balkanization of the media means that we just don't have a common place where we
get common facts and a common world view the way we did 20, 30 years ago. And that just keeps on accelerating.
Technology which brings the world to us also allows us to narrow our point of view. That's
contributed to it. Gerrymandering contributes to it.
And a lot of it has to do with just unlimited money.
But, you know there have been periods in the past where we've been pretty polarized. I think there just wasn't polling around it.
Even during the so-called Golden Age where you had liberal Republicans and conservative
Democrats and there was deal cutting going on in Congress.
Generally speaking, big stuff didn't get done unless there was a major crisis and/or you had
you had big majorities of one party controlling the Congress and a president of
the same party. I mean, that's just been the history. There have been exceptions.
My first two years in office when I had a Democratic
House and Democratic Senate, we were as productive as any time since Lyndon Johnson. And when
when the majority went away, stuff got blocked.
Probably the one thing we that could change without a Constitutional amendment that would make
a difference here would be the elimination of the routine use of the filibuster in the Senate.
Because I think that does, in an era in which the parties are more polarized, it almost
ensure greater gridlock and less clarity in terms of the positions of the parties.
There's nothing in the Constitution that requires it. The framers were pretty good about designing
a House, a Senate, to assure that a majority didn't just run rampant.
The filibuster in this modern age probably just torques it too far in the direction of a
majority party not being able to govern effectively and move forward its platform.