BY GARY ANDRES

For the Weekly Standard

President Obama missed a host of opportunities to remedy Washington’s fever of polarization during the health care debate. Instead of forging a bipartisan coalition and ratcheting back the campaign-style rhetoric, he agreed to a one-party strategy and consistently demonized his opponents with over the top rhetoric.

Mr. Obama also falsely raised citizens’ expectations that one bill or a new government program could remedy all that ails us. Government is no wonder drug.  It cannot deliver all the life altering promises on the president’s wish list.

But American politics can also produce second chances. The president may have an opportunity to generate a more realistic kind of change when it comes to education reform. Yet it’s unclear if he has the conviction or the political fortitude to do so.
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