More than anything else, Barack Obama's political rise was defined by the promise that he would usher in an era of post-partisanship after the bitter divisiveness that scarred Washington during the Bush years.

"The pundits like to slice-and-dice our country into red states and blue states,"� Obama famously lamented when he burst onto the national scene during his speech to the 2004 Democratic National Convention.

On the night he was elected Senator that November, when Republicans retained control of all branches of government, Obama said that his "understanding of the Senate is that you need 60 votes to get something significant to happen, which means that Democrats and Republicans have to ask the question, do we have the will to move an American agenda...