White House photo

President Obama holds his first cabinet meeting in April 2009.

While we wait for the official announcement from President Obama about Chuck Hagel's nomination, it's worth pausing to note the larger context: as a candidate, Obama promised a bipartisan team, and whether one approves of the goal or not, it's a promise the president has kept.

Traditionally, this hasn't been much of an issue -- presidents were largely expected to create cabinets from their own party -- but Clinton added some Republicans to his team in the 1990s, including naming William Cohen to head the Pentagon, and when George W. Bush ran in 2000, he presented himself as a relative moderate by assuring voters there would be a Democrat in his cabinet, too.

Bush later tapped Norm Mineta to lead the Department of Transportation.

But even before Obama nominates Hagel as Secretary of Defense, as best as I can tell, this president has given more administration positions to Republicans than any modern president has given to members of the other party.

For all the talk on the right about Obama being a bitter partisan, the president made former Republican Rep. John McHugh the Secretary of the Army; he made former Republican Rep. Ray LaHood the Secretary of Transportation; he put former Republican Rep. Jim Leach in charge of the National Endowment for the Humanities; he named former Republican Gov. Jon Huntsman as U.S. Ambassador to China; and he put former Republican Rep. Anne Northup in charge of the Consumer Product Safety Commission.

Obama also kept Bush's Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates, in his post, and for a while, nominated former Republican Sen. Judd Gregg as his Commerce Secretary. Indeed, Hagel has already been on the White House team, serving as a co-chairman of the President's Intelligence Advisory Board.

To be sure, opinions can vary widely as to whether this is a positive development or not.

There's a credible school of thought that suggests if Americans wanted Republicans in key administration posts, they would have elected a Republican president. For that matter, it's not as if Obama's GOP's detractors are giving him credit for crafting such a bipartisan team -- the right still considers the president a radical, left-wing partisan who refuses to reach out to Republicans, all evidence to the contrary notwithstanding.

Still, for good or ill, this is largely what Obama promised the public four years ago, and at least in theory, it's what Americans say they like -- a leader who's not afraid to surround himself with a diverse group of advisors, including folks from the other party.

A couple of weeks after the 2008 election, the Weekly Standard ran an interesting piece, listing ideas then-President Elect Obama could pursue if he were serious about governing in a unifying, post-partisan way. The writer, Peter Berkowitz, was skeptical, but if Obama were sincere about leading in an even handed way, here were seven steps he could take.

Three and a half years later, Obama embraced nearly all of the Weekly Standard's recommendations. Indeed, the Democratic president went even further, putting Republicans in high-ranking administration positions; expressing a willingness to compromise; and pursuing an agenda that was moderate and mainstream, embracing ideas that enjoyed bipartisan backing.

I thought of this reading Charles Krauthammer's new column, complaining about how "divisive" Obama is. "The entire Obama campaign," the columnist argues, "is a slice-and-dice operation."

It makes a mockery of Obama's pose as the great transcender, uniter, healer of divisions. This is the man who sprang from nowhere with that thrilling 2004 convention speech declaring that there is "not a black America and white America and Latino America and Asian America; there's the United States of America."

That was then. Today, we are just sects with quarrels -- to be exploited for political advantage.

Yes, that rascally Obama said he would reach across the aisle, work in good faith, and bring people with different ideologies together in a spirit of shared values and common purpose, but now he's, as Krauthammer's column put it, the "Divider in chief."

I wonder if Krauthammer has considered what it's like to try to be a unifying force during a time of multiple crises when the opposition party's only goal is to obstruct and destroy.

Why did Obama's efforts to bring people together fall short? Let me give you a hint in the form of a chart:

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Today's Republican Party is the most conservative it's been in a century. Making matters considerably worse, GOP lawmakers decided on Jan. 20, 2009, that they would not work with this president.

Robert Draper has a new book coming out, which shines a light on a private meeting "top Republican lawmakers and strategists" held, literally the same day as Obama's inauguration.

According to Draper, the guest list that night (which was just over 15 people in total) included Republican Reps. Eric Cantor (Va.), Kevin McCarthy (Calif.), Paul Ryan (Wis.), Pete Sessions (Texas), Jeb Hensarling (Texas), Pete Hoekstra (Mich.) and Dan Lungren (Calif.), along with Republican Sens. Jim DeMint (S.C.), Jon Kyl (Ariz.), Tom Coburn (Okla.), John Ensign (Nev.) and Bob Corker (Tenn.). [...]

[T]he book says they plotted out ways to not just win back political power, but to also put the brakes on Obama's legislative platform. "If you act like you're the minority, you're going to stay in the minority," Draper quotes McCarthy as saying. "We've gotta challenge them on every single bill and challenge them on every single campaign."

Together, they sketched out a plan over the course of four hours: attack Tim Geithner, show "unyielding opposition" to every economic proposal, launch early attack ads targeting vulnerable Democrats. The GOP leaders left their meeting "almost giddily."

As Jamelle Bouie explained, "In other words, there was nothing President Obama could have done to build common ground with Republicans. From the beginning, the plan was to relentlessly obstruct Obama, regardless of whether that was good for the country The GOP's high-minded rhetoric of compromise and bipartisanship was bunk."

In Krauthammer's mind, Obama's a "divider." But for anyone inclined to be fair and intellectually honest, who's driving the divisions?

Tom Mann and Norm Ornstein have a perspective Krauthammer may want to consider: "The GOP has become an insurgent outlier in American politics. It is ideologically extreme; scornful of compromise; unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition. When one party moves this far from the mainstream, it makes it nearly impossible for the political system to deal constructively with the country's challenges."

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Looking back at Barack Obama's message from four years ago, one of the more common messages he pushed was a deeply-held desire to govern in a bipartisan way. As a candidate, he spoke extensively about reaching across the aisle, working in good faith, and bringing people with different ideologies together in a spirit of shared values and common purpose.

We now know those efforts fell far short, and I suspect there will be some voters who are disappointed, hoping that Obama would have had more success in at least narrowing the partisan divide. But that's all the more reason to understand why bipartisanship in the Obama era has proven to be impossible.

Obama made several moves early on that suggested he was sincere. The president put Republicans in high-ranking administration positions; he expressed a willingness to compromise; and he pursued an agenda that was moderate and mainstream, embracing ideas on health care, energy, and immigration that have traditionally enjoyed bipartisan backing.

In November 2008, shortly after the election, the Weekly Standard ran a piece with a list of steps Obama could take to prove that he's serious about bipartisan governing. The president took most of the steps on the list.

But what about congressional Republicans? Robert Draper has a new book coming out, which shines a light on a private meeting "top Republican lawmakers and strategists" held, literally the same day as Obama's inauguration.

According to Draper, the guest list that night (which was just over 15 people in total) included Republican Reps. Eric Cantor (Va.), Kevin McCarthy (Calif.), Paul Ryan (Wis.), Pete Sessions (Texas), Jeb Hensarling (Texas), Pete Hoekstra (Mich.) and Dan Lungren (Calif.), along with Republican Sens. Jim DeMint (S.C.), Jon Kyl (Ariz.), Tom Coburn (Okla.), John Ensign (Nev.) and Bob Corker (Tenn.). [...]

[T]he book says they plotted out ways to not just win back political power, but to also put the brakes on Obama's legislative platform. "If you act like you're the minority, you're going to stay in the minority," Draper quotes McCarthy as saying. "We've gotta challenge them on every single bill and challenge them on every single campaign."

Together, they sketched out a plan over the course of four hours: attack Tim Geithner, show "unyielding opposition" to every economic proposal, launch early attack ads targeting vulnerable Democrats. The GOP leaders left their meeting "almost giddily."

As Jamelle Bouie explained, "In other words, there was nothing President Obama could have done to build common ground with Republicans. From the beginning, the plan was to relentlessly obstruct Obama, regardless of whether that was good for the country The GOP's high-minded rhetoric of compromise and bipartisanship was bunk."

With this in mind, for all that is good and holy in this world, can we please stop pretending that "both sides" are to blame for the failure of the parties to cooperate in Washington?