When Politics Worked? Exactly When Was That?

A certain BigMouth TV yapper (who appears regularly on MesSNBC) is out with a new epistle about a once-upon-a-time era "when politics worked."
This champion bloviator and relentless book huckster is a hopeless Obama worshiper who has admitted he gets a tingle up his leg at the mere sight of Obama. He's a congenital liberal who once worked for Democrat Boss and fellow Irishman Tip O'Neill and he also worked for the most ineffective president of modern times, Jimmy Carter.
In an effort to bolster O'Neill's image and put the former Speaker of the House on an equal plain with Ronaldus Maxus, he would have us believe that O'Neill and Ronald Reagan were best buds who worked together to advance if not the same, at least a similar agenda. Phooey!
Nothing could be further from the truth.
This is classic liberal revisionist history by people who want you to conclude that the only reason why things don't seem to be working now is because Republicans are preventing government from functioning. Forget the fact that Obama constantly castigates all those who oppose him and that he engages in 24/7 campaigning instead of governing and that he won't even negotiate with the opposite party that controls the House of Representatives and most state governments. According to liberal revisionists, it's all just the GOP's fault.
But let's get back to that "hunky-dory' relationship between Tip and Ron, okay?
Here are the facts:
Tip O'Neil and other liberals were condescending to Reagan and dismissed President Reagan as an "amiable dunce." Of Reagan, former Democrat Defense Secretary and advisor to Dem presidents Clack Clifford said at the time: "Poor dear, there's nothing between his ears."
As Speaker of the House, Tip O'Neill presided over 12 funding gaps or government shutdowns. Was that politics that worked?

Tip O'Neill said that Ronald Reagan “has no concern, no regard, no care for the little man in America. And I understand that. Because of his lifestyle, he never meets those people.”

O'Neill even blasted Reagan further, claiming in 1984 that "the evil is in the White House at the present time. And that evil is a man who has no care and no concern for the working class of America and the future generations of America, and who likes to ride a horse. He’s cold. He’s mean. He’s got ice water for blood."

Indeed, Steven F. Hayward has written in Commentary:

The hostilities between parties and ideologies in Washington during Reagan’s presidency make the present day look tame by comparison. No president in modern times has ever been as reviled [as Reagan]. And the hatred of Reagan [by liberals] was justified, to some degree, because his presidency, in the rueful words of the journalist Richard Reeves a decade ago, “damned near destroyed American liberalism.”

So, there was no love lost between Reagan and O'Neill nor between Republicans and Democrats in the 1980s. And the same holds true for just about any era in American history.
Politics is a bloodsport - then, now and probably in the future as well. As Harry Truman once said of Washington: "If you ant a friend in this town, get a dog."
Except perhaps for times of extreme national crisis when our nation was under attack by foreign forces (2011, 1942, etc.) the parties and their leaders have pretty much always been at each other's throats.
That's the way politics is.
That's the nature of the beast.
And anybody who would have you believe otherwise is s snake-oil salesman. For he is engaging in the very same political shenanigans that he pretends to decry.