David Ignatius Quotes

It's a bit unfair to accuse Obama of dividing the nation when the facts show that it already is.

I would like Obama to be tougher on going up against the Republicans, I don't think he should try to be so moderate.

Obama has been the victim of bad luck in having an implacable Republican Party.

A government full of Democrats would rather have you be a Republican, and a government full of Republicans would rather have you be a Democrat, than have you oppose both.

I don't understand how anybody's still a Democrat or a Republican. I don't know what they're basing it on.

I mean, look, we're living in a country where you can't have a non-denominational response. If you're slightly critical of either party, all of the partisans jump on you like you're a lunatic.

At the start of his second term, one wonders less about Obama's fitness than his willingness: Why doesn't he do more to build and maintain the relationships required to govern in era of polarization?

Republicans are completely befuddled by Obama's 'star power' and don't seem to have a clear or effective strategy to compete.

Incivility is not the disease. It is the symptom. Partisanship is the disease…. When your highest duty is to your party, the public interest becomes subservient.

There are some in Congress who would rather see their opponents lose than see their country win. That has got to stop…. They must find a way to put country ahead of party.

My Republican compatriots do not feel that people ought to work with Democrats across the aisle—Compromise is a bad word.

I think the Republican Party has become something of a personality cult.

Donald Trump supporters are as opposed to Hillary Clinton and probably more so than the Republican Party establishment is.

Trump is, to some extent, redefining what we think of as polarization in this country. Where polarization has been seen as ideological, it is now being seen almost as behavioral.

I don't see anything that could happen that could turn Never Trumpers into Trumper voters. They're two dug in on the whole concept that Trump is not even a human being in the realm of politics. That Trump is just the worst guy ever to want to be in politics. He's just repulsive, he's repugnant, he's crass, he's all these things.

It used to be you had real friends on the other side of the aisle. It's not like that anymore. Society has changed. The public is to blame as well. I think the people have gotten dumber.

I think that Barack Obama faces a level of divisiveness, and I don't mean on a national level in terms of the North and the South and the Civil War; I really mean just politically.

You have to have been a Republican to know how good it is to be a Democrat.

Obama is a guy who claims to be unaware that there was a Tea Party, a guy that's detached from the country.

I'm a moderate. I hang out in the middle. I vote against my party with some regularity and try to compromise. It doesn't appear right now that the Republican Party is welcoming moderates any more.

There's something about Barack Obama that induces Americans to imagine what they cannot see. The Right envisions a vile socialist, while many on the Left picture an inspired liberal, politically restrained in his first term but now free to pursue his true beliefs.

To my great disappointment, it appears that the politics of division are making a big comeback. Many Americans share my disappointment - especially those who were filled with great hope a few years ago, when then-Senator Obama announced his candidacy in Springfield, Illinois.

I'm very concerned about the tone of politics in recent years. We've seen a decline in civility and bipartisanship, and a rapid increase in hostility between those who have differing opinions. I think this has led to the alienation of the public in governance, which jeopardizes democratic participation.

The problem we've got now in Washington is that the goals are completely the opposite from each other.

We are now living in a post-Roosevelt, post-Reagan universe. What comes next will not be post-partisan, because faction is an intrinsic human impulse.