During the 2008 campaign, Barack Obama repeatedly promised to “turn the page on the ugly partisanship in Washington, so we can bring Democrats and Republicans together to pass an agenda that works for the American people.”

Fast forward to today. Obama already passed his signature domestic achievement — the health care act — without a single Republican vote. But at least he did have a majority of both houses behind him in the days when the Democrats had majorities in both chambers. Now he has “passed” his signature foreign policy achievement — the Iran deal — without a single Republican vote. Not only that, but he did so with the support of a congressional minority and without a substantive debate in the Senate. 

Using all of the political muscle at their disposal, Obama and Harry Reid managed to corral 42 votes to cut off debate on the Iran deal. Fifty-eight senators, including four Democrats, voted against the deal; 42 senators, all Democrats, supported it. Never mind that this is a violation of the spirit, if not the letter, of the Corker-Cardin legislation, passed nearly unanimously by both houses, which was designed to allow a congressional vote on the deal. (Not that Corker-Cardin is to blame: Obama would have done the same thing, without or without that bill.)

You have to give Obama credit at some level: Like LBJ, he has shown himself to be a shrewd and ruthless vote-counter, who can produce just enough votes to sustain his policies, no matter what it takes. In Obama’s case, what that took was vituperative rhetoric suggesting that opponents of the deal were war-mongers and Zionist dupes.

But the cost of such hardball tactics is high. By disregarding the clear will of a majority in Congress, and if polls are to be believed, in the country at large, Obama is furthering the sense of cynicism and disenchantment that he inveighed against during his first presidential campaign. He is exacerbating the partisan divide, playing into the hands of extreme Republican partisans who want to destroy the political system rather than make it work better. And he is providing more ammunition for reckless demagogues such as Donald Trump to claim that the “politicians” in Washington have disregarded the will of the people. But Obama, cynically, probably doesn’t care about that either — he no doubt figures that a Trump victory in the Republican race would only make more likely a continuance of Democratic control of the White House.

Obama is right in the short-term, cynical political calculations he is making. But he is being reckless and irresponsible in ignoring the long-term cost of his actions — especially when he makes a mockery of any tradition that politics ends “at the water’s edge.”

He’d better hope the Iran deal is worth it, because the cost of getting it through is to further heighten the already-staggering dysfunction in Washington.