Juxtaposition

Barack Obama's revelation about the problem with fetishizing bipartisanship:

White House aides say they have concluded that Obama too frequently lost control of the debate and his own image during the stimulus battle. By this reckoning, the story became too much about failed efforts at bipartisanship and Washington deal-making, and not enough about the president’s public salesmanship...

Reflecting as “somebody who has been in this town,” he observed that “there’s an insatiable appetite for the notion of bipartisanship here and we allowed that to get ahead of ourselves.”

But Emanuel said that they recognized they had overdone their initial outreach to Republicans and had offered "a sharp message for the last week."

Stephen Harper and Michael Ignatieff, as observed by Barack Obama and his advisers yesterday:

There was a further discussion (between Obama and Harper) about Afghanistan and Pakistan. The Prime Minister talked about how they had developed this bipartisan approach to their own deployment through the Manley Commission, which had developed a road map for the Canadian involvement and led to the Canadian decision to deploy the troops until 2011.
...
Mr. Ignatieff spent a lot of time talking about the importance of bipartisanship in Canada on foreign policy and how they had made the decision to back the government on the deployment after the Manley Commission, and that they saw this as not a partisan issue; it was more important to get the country together on issues like the budget and on Afghanistan and Pakistan, and that this was a commitment that they were sharing across the parties, and that they wanted to work together with the United States.

And to conclude, John Cole, just in case anybody has missed it elsewhere:

I really don’t understand how bipartisanship is ever going to work when one of the parties is insane. Imagine trying to negotiate an agreement on dinner plans with your date, and you suggest Italian and she states her preference would be a meal of tire rims and anthrax. If you can figure out a way to split the difference there and find a meal you will both enjoy, you can probably figure out how bipartisanship is going to work the next few years.