Obama's Presidency - Midways of His First term

As much as I'm disappointed in the depth of improvements the American's have gotten since January 2009, one should remember that he did also run on making compromises, reaching across the aisle (even though he's more to the left politically than Hillary). That's what he's doing. Or at least has been trying desperately to do. But the other side didn't wanna play, or in the few cases they do, they play so hard ball, that he should have stopped playing very early in each negotiation. He was trying to stay "kind/polite", because he was also running on not playing the old dog's game of angry partisanship. It's just really hard to succeed doing that, when the other side continues the rough partisanship. I imagine that he himself is bitter about some of the policy outcomes, and sometimes he probably wanna bang his head against the wall in frustration with the results and the political realities he's up against. Could he have done better? Yes. Would Hillary have been better in all matters? Under the current circumstances, with the dirty politics still being the norm in D.C., perhaps. But he ran on changing that game, and people voted for him by noticeable margins to get that chance. The fact that that wasn't enough to make the politicians make balanced compromises in respect for their opponents is just sad, seen from a democratic, idealist perspective. Maybe that just wasn't possible when the vast majority of the current Republicans holding office are much more extremist in their opinions than most Republicans before them. The moderate Republicans (and Democrats) have just about been rooted out of office. I don't understand why that happened, but nonetheless do I acknowledge that it's hard for anyone to make balanced compromises when the opinions are that far apart.