TITLE CARD: Fall 2009 

NEWSCASTER: Fifty-two percent of the American people disapprove of President Obama’s handling of─

NEWSCASTER: There are rising doubts about his approach on domestic issues─

NARRATOR: Obama’s efforts to restart bipartisan health care reform had failed.

PHIL SCHILIRO, Obama Adviser: We still continued to try to reach out to individual Republican senators, individual Republican House members. But in terms of being able to have a big agreement that would garner 80 votes, that wasn’t possible.

NARRATOR: The only path forward, to abandon bipartisanship and rely on the Democratic majority in Congress.

DAVID AXELROD, Obama Adviser: Choice was to do nothing or to do something with the tools you had and the majority that you had. He chose to do that.

TOM DASCHLE: It was an admission of failure, really, an admission that in spite of his best efforts, there was no way he could bring the Republicans along on something that looked so obvious when it all started.