Obama thrashing around for a theme

Last week Obama was saying that if Republicans won, it would mean "hand-to-hand combat" on Capitol Hill for the next two years. Now in an interview with the NY Times Obama says:

“It may be that regardless of what happens after this election, they feel more responsible either because they didn’t do as well as they anticipated, and so the strategy of just saying no to everything and sitting on the sidelines and throwing bombs didn’t work for them, or they did reasonably well, in which case the American people are going to be looking to them to offer serious proposals and work with me in a serious way.”

Meanwhile Mark Halperin writes for Time Magazine that the Obama administration isn't exactly the best at dealing with others:

With the exception of core Obama Administration loyalists, most politically engaged elites have reached the same conclusions: the White House is in over its head, isolated, insular, arrogant and clueless about how to get along with or persuade members of Congress, the media, the business community or working-class voters. This view is held by Fox News pundits, executives and anchors at the major old-media outlets, reporters who cover the White House, Democratic and Republican congressional leaders and governors, many Democratic business people and lawyers who raised big money for Obama in 2008, and even some members of the Administration just beyond the inner circle. . . .