First Read: “In today’s highly polarized political world, this is how you win elections — by motivating your base and by recognizing there are few swing voters left. But it also makes governing harder, especially when the parties are trading electoral victories every two years (with Democrats benefitting from presidential turnouts, and with Republicans benefitting from midterm turnouts). When you have data-driven candidates appealing to win 51% of voters, it means that a president’s job-approval rating is never going to get much higher than that, and it means that bipartisan policy goals (like the TPP free-trade agreement) are the exception rather than the rule.”

“Bottom line: Campaigns don’t engage in persuasion anymore. They simply look for unmotivated like-minded potential voters and find an issue to motivate them. And if someone wins office by not having to persuade a voter who actually swings between the two parties, there isn’t any motivation for said elected official to compromise. This cycle of polarization will continue until someone wins a massive election based on a different premise.”

“Republicans taking control of Congress this coming week will try to overcome their reputation as a divided party hobbled by infighting by working to reshape policy in ways that Americans will feel in corporate boardrooms, on factory floors and at the gas pump,” the Washington Post reports.

“Incoming committee chairmen are preparing fresh oversight of federal agencies while rank-and-file members will be encouraged to use a new budget plan and government spending bills to chip away at President Obama’s environmental regulations, health-care reform and outreach to Cuba and Iran.”

New York Times: “With more than 120 years in the House and Senate among them, four lawmakers offered a bit of parting wisdom to Capitol Hill newcomers: Partisanship is easy, governing is hard.”

“As the 114th Congress prepares to convene on Tuesday, some senior members, who will not be returning, reflected on what they saw as necessary to the success of both lawmakers and the institution.”

Roll Call: “The hard right and the hard left ended up out in the cold last week — free to raise their fists and their profiles and make a ruckus, but ultimately powerless to stop the cromnibus.”

“The deal represents a return — at least for a week — to the fabled establishment Washington dealmaking of yore, warts and all, like it or loathe it. It’s a return that could put the ‘do nothing’ label back on the congressional shelf — with Republicans and the president eyeing deals next year on trade and taxes, in addition to keeping the government open for business after four years of serial shutdown and default dramas.”

Amy Walter: “There’s a reason why the people who run campaigns are rarely the people responsible for implementing policy. The job of a campaign operative is to work in absolutes – you win or you lose, there’s no gray area. The job of a policy operative, of course, is to look for the gray, to look for solutions within the increasingly narrowing options of our polarized political system.”

“However, the way one wins a campaign ultimately determines how an incumbent and his/her party can (or cannot) legislate. And, the way that both sides have boxed themselves in on tough issues like immigration, entitlements, and climate change on the campaign trail ultimately leaves little room for any meaningful compromise in a 2015 Congress.”

David Gergen: “At a time when national politics is so broken, a new generation of young men and women who first cut their teeth in service to others are now venturing into the political arena, offering us fresh, idealistic leadership that may be our best hope of breaking out of today’s mess.”

“This new wave of candidates comes from two vital streams in American life: young veterans coming home from protecting their country overseas along with others who served their country back home as volunteers in classrooms, hospitals, shelters, and beyond. Veterans and social entrepreneurs — they are joining forces and could become a new, powerful force for change.”

Ray LaRaja: “Like much in life, pushing people to the table means offering them rewards and punishments. Otherwise we get stalemate. In the Herald article, a legislator complains about ‘arm twisting.’ Cry me a river. He has a choice: ignore the leadership and vote his conscience or go with the majority. Voters will ultimately decide if his principled stand was worth the price of ignoring the arm-twist.”

First Read: “You can boil down the past three weeks in Washington to this one theme: The Obama White House and Democrats have a political problem when it comes to governing (see the Obamacare website), while Republicans have a political problem because they don’t want to govern (see the shutdown). And both sides have used the other party’s problems to mask their own.”

“Basically, the best thing both parties have going for each other right now is each other. That said, the public clearly wants competence and does like governing, see, well, every recent poll.”

Juliet Lapidos: “In theory, lawmakers should hope that government programs work well, and if they don’t, work to fix them. Elected representatives should hope that government agencies carry out their missions smoothly, and if something goes wrong, try to figure out what happened to avoid making the same mistake in the future.”

“Obviously that’s not how things work in the United States, where one of the two parties doesn’t actually believe in government. Republicans want to shrink government until it’s small enough to drown in a bathtub! They think there’s nothing scarier than the prospect of a government employee trying to help! With beliefs like those, it’s perhaps not surprising that — with disturbing frequency — they root for failure in order to score points.”

A new Pew Research poll finds that just 49% of the public says President Obama is “able to get things done,” down from 57% in January and closer to his levels of confidence in 2012. But the vast majority of Americans, 67%, believe Obama is fighting hard for his policies, a quality that has been questioned in the wake of legislative setbacks.

Mike Murphy: “Unlike his congressional opponents, President Obama faces a merciless count­down clock….The White House realizes this and has come to the shaky conclusion that the President’s best tactic is to continue the campaign theatrics and force the GOP-controlled Congress to bend to his will. Showing the hubris of all things Obama, the White House has forgotten that while he won re-election fair and square with about 66 million votes, 61 million other Americans voted to fire the President.”

“Many of those anti-Obama voters live and vote in the 232 congressional districts firmly held by Republicans. It is terribly naive to think that stuffing e-mail ­inboxes and ­presidential hectoring on the stump will persuade those voters–and their members of Congress–to support the President’s decidedly left-tilting ­second-term agenda. When the President threatens the Republicans in Congress with ‘or else,’ they just roll their eyes and wonder ‘or else what?’ In their precincts, he is not even a paper tiger.”

The Cloakroom: No, President Obama is not overreaching.