President Obama Finally Sociable With Opposition

I have been hearing lately how President Obama, whom I have supported with my votes in each of his successful campaigns, is now inviting Republican opposition lawmakers to the White House where he is treating them with hospitality and friendliness.  While making his pitch, I'm sure, to try to persuade some of them to support some of his agenda against the unswerving, even irrational hostility generated by their leaders Mitch McConnell (Senate Minority Leader) and John Boehner (House Speaker). I've also been garnering reactions about this change of strategy from both conservative and liberal opinion makers.  The liberals seems to support Obama's sociable outreach, but some of the right-wing talk radio bigmouths are being critical of those GOP legislators who accepted the President's hospitality.  I have a deeper reaction, and it goes down to the heart of what I am currently feeling about Barack Obama as a leader.

Being a somewhat politically simple-minded soul, I have been naively believing for all these years that Obama was ALREADY reaching out and interacting with those Republican senators and congressmen.  All along...but no, apparently... he's had a "close door" policy against his opponents in Washington.  So if what I think that is coming out in the news is correct, then this president has long detached himself from the crucial process involved in political deal-making and arm-twisting.  Just take what perhaps the most successful president to get his programs passed by Congress, Lyndon Johnson, did all day, day after day.  He would be on the phone and directly communicating with those in Congress whose votes he needed to secure.  This necessary activity is something that our current president has thought himself to be too "above" to engage himself in.  Too bad.  And I wonder in retrospect how much of the obduracy of the Republican opposition in the Senate and House is due in large part to this...well, I'll say it...elitist attitude from the White House. 

I still support Obama, but my support has never been at the disturbing level of some others I've seen who act as he if were the Second Coming.  Now I am more skeptical of him, because it has taken more than four years in office for him to treat politicians whose outlooks on the issues are different with not only respect, but also an attitude of personal interest in their lives that anyone who isn't a complete imbecile should have been able to figure out was a necessary part of this nation's political process.  And what's even more incredible to me is that I used to watch him on C-Span2, the channel showing the deliberation of the U.S. Senate, when he used to be a senator (of Illinois) from 2005 to 2007...as he would show the most cordial, personable rapport with opposition-party senators during voting sessions.  How could he have forgotten this necessity?