The president took on the House Republicans and came out the winner. But will it make any difference?

South of the border, the last few months have been bruising ones for the Obama Administration. Legislative priorities such as revamping health care in the U.S. have stalled and political rancour between the Democrats and Republicans seems to have reached an all-time high. It’s not surprising then, over the last few weeks the president has tried to right the ship.

There was, of course, his first State of the Union address, but something far more remarkable occurred two days later, when the Republican leadership invited Obama to address the House Republican retreat luncheon. The president accepted and his staff arranged for the event to be televised. The U.S. media was agog at the event, marveling that it was unprecedented and comparing it to question period in the British (or Canadian) parliament. In reality, even that comparison was off. Unlike question period, where questioning and answering is spread amongst many speakers and government backbenchers are able to helpfully lob softball questions to their own leadership, in this case it was President Obama alone, facing down the 140 Republicans in attendance, with no teleprompter, aides, or even notes at his immediate disposal. Entering the lion’s den, indeed.

So what happened? The consensus was that Obama was terrific, and that consenting to televising the event turned out to be terrible strategy on the part of the Republicans. In retrospect, what happened shouldn’t have been particularly surprising. A common attack on Obama is that he’s all talk. If so, his political opposition might have realized that it probably wasn’t a good idea to put him in a situation where that was all he had to do, because he excelled at it.

By turns affable and steely, but always with total composure and self-possession, the president easily parried all of the questions asked and attacks leveled. He demonstrated complete command of the issues, often going into specifics with respect to the disparate bills and proposals mentioned. He also calmly identified shallow talking points as such when they were lobbed at him, clearly embarrassing a few questioners in the process – but did so with a smile that prevented real animosity from developing in the room. When one questioner claimed that a proposed Republican health care bill would somehow solve all health care problems in the country without costing “one additional dime,” the president reasonably noted that, in the real world, such magical fixes don’t exist. He read from the GOP’s own summary document to illustrate the lack of specificity underlying such proposals, which, he chided, can’t simply “be political assertions that aren’t substantiated by details of policy.”

Obama also spoke to the Republicans (and really, to the viewing audience) about the wretched political tone in Washington, noting that the demonization of the opposing side by both parties makes cooperation impossible. He drew unwilling laughs from the audience in joking that the Republicans had attacked his health care plan as if it was “some kind of Bolshevik plot,” and pointed out that caricaturing him as someone out to destroy America makes it difficult for them to work with him without making themselves politically vulnerable within their own party. At one point, after complimenting one attendee’s beautiful family, Obama joked that just in case doing so might open the Congressman up to internal party attacks, he hadn’t really meant it.

Suffice it to say, throughout the exchanges, Obama essentially played the Roadrunner to the Republicans’ Wile E. Coyote. He came across as the smartest guy in the proverbial room and likely reminded viewers why they had liked him so much in the first place.

By the end of the night, two things were clear. First, why the White House had pushed to have the session televised: seeing Obama interact with the group completely undermined the caricature that has been used to attack both him and his policies. The president came across as affable, likable, and, most of all, reasonable; in short, a far cry from the wildly radical, “country destroying” far-left radical of Conservative attack ads. This truth drove home the second point: politically speaking, the Republicans should never have consented to the request to broadcast the proceedings. After the event, Republican strategists admitted that this was a huge mistake; an unfiltered view of Obama simply does not suit their purposes.

The question is, what will come of this? Will such a joint exchange lead to further cooperation or help to lay groundwork to break the acrimonious gridlock currently paralyzing Washington?

Well … no. While the event was a great piece of political theatre, it will almost certainly not be repeated anytime soon, and there is almost no chance of a thaw in the rancour between the two major parties. Politically speaking, there is really no incentive for the Republican opposition to cooperate with the ruling Democrats. The U.S. economy is down, unemployment is at a frightening level, and the mood of the country is grim. In such circumstances, the party in power is inevitably blamed, and the massive deficits which have resulted play neatly into the old political narrative of Democrats as profligate and economically reckless.

In short, the buck currently stops with Obama and the Democrats. This means that the ongoing Republican strategy of refusing to work with the government and blocking Democratic initiatives only reinforces public angst that the government is not making the situation any better, and wounds the party in power all the more. Better for Republicans then that they spread wild accusations that heighten anxiety and confuse the public (“death panels,” anyone?). Taking the tack of essentially stalling progress on the issues and then turning around and deriding the Democrats for the same lack of improvement may sound counterintuitive, but it has proved to be very effective politics.

Obviously, the Obama Administration knows this, and understands that there is little hope of meaningful collaboration. Little surprise then, that their strategy now seems to be to try to paint the Republicans as obstructionist – which was the clear subtext the president was pushing in his remarks at the Republican luncheon. The hope is to try to pin the impasse on the opposition, to force them to return to the table or create a price for not doing so.

From a Canadian perspective, this illustrates one thing. It shows that as rancorous and nasty as our politics seem to be becoming, the situation is still not nearly as bad as that across the border. We can only hope that when Parliament returns, it stays that way.