Wire: Obama's Post-Partisan Politics DOA

French news agency AFP, reflecting an international view of American politics, has taken notice that Obama's promise of post-partisanship leadership is dead on arrival.

After Barack Obama's first big win, the White House finds itself in the odd position of denying the new president has absorbed a power-sapping defeat.

...the president appealed to Republicans to get behind his massive economic stimulus package.

The Democratic president plied Republican leaders with cocktails, sent out invites to a White House Super Bowl party and even made a rare presidential foray to Congress to woo the other side.

But when the 819-billion-dollar package came up in the House of Representatives last week, not a single Republican voted yes.

[. . .]

Republicans in the House had sound political reasons to obey their leadership and vote against the stimulus package.

They complain that Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats did not get Obama's memo about bipartisanship and claim they were shut out of framing a bill they say features unnecessary spending and insufficient tax cuts.

Read it.