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Obama's victory: A road to compromise or gridlock?
Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney arrives on stage on election night November 7, 2012 in Boston, Massachusetts, moments before conceding defeat to President Barack Obama.
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Both Governor Mitt Romney and President Obama ended their campaigns with calls for bipartisanship.
But John Cochrane, a Romney adviser and professor of finance at the Booth School of Business, thinks the country is in store for more Washington gridlock: "The situation we have now is a democratic president who thinks the Congress is a bunch of Neanderthals. We have a republican Congress who thinks the president is a socialist... They are going to be fighting it out for four years."
Jared Bernstein, former chief economist for Vice President Biden who is now a senior fellow at Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, is more optimistic a deal can be reached: "Look these guys agree on 98 percent of the tax changes that should occur -- if they can figure out a way to compromise, a lot of other stuff falls into place."
Hey Jeff! Just as we're hoping for a little bi-partisan love across the aisle the day after, here comes your interview with John Cochrane. Listened to it twice. Do the country a favor and put the man on the Marketplace do not call list for a while and maybe, just maybe we can foster solutions rather than polemics. What do we gain by characterizing Washington's back-and-forth as Neanderthals vs. a Socialist. Just a little civility, puh-leeze.
