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Missing Element in Obama’s Ties With G.O.P. Leaders: Good Chemistry

WASHINGTON — President Obama and Representative John A. Boehner, the House Republican leader, share a love of golf. But the prospect of the two men hitting the links together would seem as likely as, say, the president and Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader, exchanging a hearty “bro hug” before Thursday’s meeting on health care.

Beyond all the hand-wringing about hyper-partisanship that accompanies every discussion here these days, a more subtle — and perhaps pertinent — reality hangs over the much-anticipated Blair House confab: Mr. Obama and Republican leaders on Capitol Hill appear to have no personal chemistry whatsoever.

They have spent little time together since Mr. Obama took office. White House and Congressional aides who have seen them interact describe the encounters as “strained” and “scripted.” Mr. Boehner last week accused the president of being a “finger-wagging” lecturer, while Mr. Obama has complained to an aide that some House Republican leaders “smirk” through their meetings. If good chemistry is essential to good politics, as Senator Edward M. Kennedy used to say, these guys are in oil and water territory.

“Relationships matter in politics and you have to work at building them,” said Senator Bob Corker, Republican of Tennessee, who like many Washington figures these days, invokes with nostalgia the friendship between President Ronald Reagan and the House speaker, Thomas P. O’Neill, bitter public adversaries who nonetheless forged a chummy and productive bond after hours.

By comparison, today’s principals appear to have mastered only the “public adversaries” part.

Mr. Boehner and Mr. Obama have not held a single one-on-one meeting since Mr. Obama’s election, according to Mr. Boehner’s office. Representative Eric Cantor, the House Republican whip, has described Mr. Obama to colleagues as “thin-skinned” and quick to bring up Republican criticisms of him.

Mr. McConnell, a five-term senator from Kentucky, has made an art form of backhandedly commending the president for his interpersonal skills — not unlike describing an unattractive date as having a “good personality.” Or, in the case of Mr. Obama, “an A-plus personality,” according to a recent gush from Mr. McConnell, who has also described the president as “fun to be around.” When asked for examples of “fun,” Mr. McConnell’s spokesman, Don Stewart, offered a cellphone call between Mr. Obama and Mr. McConnell, who was shopping at a Kroger’s in Louisville (“They chatted about entitlements and the debt commission,” Mr. Stewart said.).

In turn, White House officials accuse Republicans of not listening to the president anyway. “They seem more interested in playing a role than actually establishing a dialogue,” said David Axelrod, a White House senior adviser.

Mr. Obama, who barely knew the leaders of the other party when he served in the Senate, seems to have lost any expectation that investing a lot of quality time with Republican leaders would help build a better relationship. (To wit: when asked in an interview what he would say to the president in a private meeting, Mr. Cantor said, “I would take the opportunity to press the president on why he thinks it’s better to ignore the public.”)

While no one believes that more movie nights at the White House could spur, say, Mr. Cantor to support the Obama health bill, there is a long political precedent for social interaction between adversaries greasing substantive alliances.

“The founders’ work was grounded in personal chemistry,” said Ted Widmer, a presidential historian at Brown University and former speechwriter for President Bill Clinton. “They spent endless time together. They lived near each other in Philadelphia. They disagreed profoundly on things, but they all knew each other, and that helped.”

In the early days of his administration, Mr. Obama seemed committed to building camaraderie with Republicans. He initiated bipartisan “cocktail parties” a week after his inauguration, though none appeared on the president’s schedule after Feb. 4, 2009, according to the unofficial keeper of such data, Mark Knoller of CBS News. The president was host to four Republican lawmakers at a Super Bowl Party last year (but just one this year, Representative Ahn Cao of Louisiana, the only Republican in either chamber to support the health care bill).

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John A. Boehner, left, the House Republican leader, on a rare White House visit Feb. 9. Democratic leaders Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid also joined the president.Credit...Luke Sharrett/The New York Times

Mr. Axelrod said the president was more than willing to engage the other party in both casual settings and policy discussions. According to the White House press office, 132 Republican members of Congress have attended White House social events with Mr. Obama, and more than 50 have had either group or individual sessions with him. Republican members have made more than 300 visits to the White House.

Top staff members and cabinet officials, including the chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel and Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner, routinely interact with top Republicans on the Hill, although the degree to which they do is also a point of dispute.

Mr. Boehner said last month that he had not spoken “in a year” to Mr. Emanuel, a former House colleague, to which the White House immediately responded by saying the men had spoken three times since November.

“Which means they say ‘Hi’ at the outset of a meeting,” quipped Mr. Boehner’s spokesman, Michael Steel.

Whatever. Mr. Obama and today’s Republican chiefs are a long way from the relative buddy act of Mr. Reagan and Mr. O’Neill, headstrong ideological opposites operating in the bitterly partisan swamp of the 1980s. Their harsh rhetoric might have suggested that they could not stand each other, but in fact, the congenial Irishmen spent significant private time together — and ultimately achieved a crucial bipartisan compromise on Social Security.

Even the publicly contentious relationship between President Clinton and the House speaker, Newt Gingrich, in the 1990s yielded regular private conversations — and eased the passage of a bill to overhaul the welfare system.

It is worth noting that both Mr. O’Neill and Mr. Gingrich led majorities in their respective houses — and thus enjoyed leverage that Mr. Boehner and Mr. McConnell do not. Even so, for whatever reason, Mr. Obama has yet to find such an across-the-aisle partner. It is not for lack of precedent in his case. He has often spoken of his close relations with the Republican Senators Tom Coburn of Oklahoma and Richard G. Lugar of Indiana, whom he worked with while in the Senate. Mr. Axelrod singled out Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina as a potential ally and noted that the president has spoken extensively to Senator Olympia J. Snowe of Maine, especially in trying to win her support for last year’s economic stimulus bill (successful) and health care legislation (not).

“The president himself has good chemistry with almost everyone,” said Mr. Axelrod, who pointed out that while Mr. Obama served in the Illinois State Senate, he played in a weekly poker game with mostly Republicans, “and not just because he wanted to take their money.”

Mr. Axelrod adds that the White House will continue to extend social invitations to Republicans, and that he would not foreclose on the possibility of a golf invitation one day to Mr. Boehner, a scratch player. If he does, Mr. Boehner would be the first Republican public official to join a presidential foursome since Mr. Obama took office, according to Mr. Knoller.

Scott Brown, the new Republican senator from Massachusetts, challenged Mr. Obama to a basketball game at the White House, to which the president seemed amenable. (The White House invited two Republican House members to participate in a much-hyped hoops game last October.) And there are indications that the White House — which just got 13 Republican votes to help pass a jobs bill — might be reinvigorating its efforts at bipartisan team-building since Mr. Brown’s election deprived Democrats of their 60-vote super-majority.

Mr. Coburn received a call from the president earlier this month about the possibility of working on a bill to adjust a disparity in sentencing between people who are arrested for possession of crack and those for crack-cocaine.

“We’re going to get this done,” Mr. Coburn said, noting that he never received a call about health care proposals. The president then invited him to come by the White House in the near future, “just to visit,” Mr. Coburn said.

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section A, Page 21 of the New York edition with the headline: Missing Element in Obama’s Ties With G.O.P. Leaders: Good Chemistry. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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