Bipartisan Politics

I more or less agree with what Paul Krugman is saying here:

You see, this isn’t a brainstorming session — it’s a collision of fundamentally incompatible world views. If one thing is clear from the stimulus debate, it’s that the two parties have utterly different economic doctrines. Democrats believe in something more or less like standard textbook macroeconomics; Republicans believe in a doctrine under which tax cuts are the universal elixir, and government spending is almost always bad.

Obama may be able to get a few Republican Senators to go along with his plan; or he can get a lot of Republican votes by, in effect, becoming a Republican. There is no middle ground.

I agree that it's true that Obama has made way too many concessions in the current stimulus plan to pave the way for his doctrine of bipartisan cooperation. As it stands, I believe, the Senate bill contains some $300 billion in tax cuts, which I'm sure is more than Obama had initially wanted. I think on the one hand that it is admirable that he is geniunely attempting to commit to his word / his lofty ideal / his political platform during the election of ending the era of partisan politics (or at least ushering in an era of cooperation). Yet, after all the concessions, we know what happened in the Assembly. If Obama is going to water down the stimulus in favor of an ideal -- if he's going to include big business tax cuts, remove provisions for family planning, etc, it would be nice if there would be some actual, noticeable political results at the very least. I think it's time for Obama to break out the big guns.

Is it too much to expect out political leaders to work together?