CLAIM: President Obama says Americans believe “Washington is broken.”

• “No matter what party they belong to, I bet most Americans are thinking the same thing right now:  Nothing will get done this year, or next year, or maybe even the year after that, because Washington is broken.” (President Obama, State of the Union Address, January 24, 2012)

FACT: President Obama clearly cannot run on his economic record and has begun looking for others to blame, turning to the politics of division and further breaking his promise to change the tone in Washington:

• White House communications director Dan Pfeiffer: “We were in a position of legislative compromise by necessity.  That phase is behind us…” (The New York Times, 9/20/11)
  
  
• “Candidate Barack Obama promised to transcend Washington partisanship.  President Obama plummeted into it.  The hard truth is that Washington next year will look indistinguishable from the one Obama warned against…”  (POLITICO, 1/17/12)
  
  
• “Predictions that Obama would usher in a new era of post-partisan consensus politics now seem not just naïve but delusional.” (The New Yorker, 1/30/12)
   
• “…it’s simply a fact that the president failed at ‘bringing Democrats and Republicans together.’” (FactCheck.org, 1/4/12)
  
  
• “It’s another reminder of Obama’s central campaign pledge to change the culture of Washington, a town that is arguably more gridlocked and partisan than the day he took office.” (POLITICO, 1/4/12)
  
  
• “For a candidate who campaigned against Washington's petty politics  … the change has been striking.” (USA TODAY, 12/15/11)
  
  
• “A year later, lots of partisanship …Obama has clearly fallen far short on this promise.” (Politifact, 1/19/10)
  
  
• “WINFREY: Has that been one of your biggest disappointments? B. OBAMA: Yes, that I have not been able to change Washington's tone as much as I...thought I could, and probably...was overly optimistic.” (The Oprah Winfrey Show, 5/2/11)
  
  
• “A record-high 81% of Americans are dissatisfied with the way the country is being governed…” (Gallup, 9/26/11)

• “We’re up here legislating. We’re working. The president is out campaigning. Maybe he ought to sit down with Congress, members of both parties, to see if we can’t find more common ground in which -- to achieve the goals that the American people sent us here to achieve.” (Interview with Fox News, 10/13/11)