Oh Dear God Please Tell Me He Can't Be That Naive

...there's a tradition in the Republican Party of more common sense than that. My hope, my expectation, is that after the election, now that it turns out that the goal of beating Obama doesn't make much sense because I'm not running again, that we can start getting some cooperation again...

-- Barack Obama

He makes Charlie Brown, preparing to kick Lucy's football, look like a hard-nosed skeptic.

Obviously Obama is not, in any sense, a stupid man. But there comes a point where an idée fixe can produce the functional equivalent of stupidity. And we're way, way past it.

Update: It belatedly occurs to me that liberals' hope that Obama isn't as naive about negotiation and the realities of politics in our day as he seems, and that he'll come around soon, is precisely parallel to Obama's hope that Republicans aren't as insincere about negotiation and devoted to destructive politics as they seem, and that they'll come around soon.