Well, he pretty much ran in the center...maybe slightly center-left...with a very obvious bias toward consensus management. It shouldn't really surprise anyone that he wants to govern the same way. Clearly, he underestimated the amount of hatred out there, and the ability of the Republicans to stall. On the other hand, he did accomplish a lot in two years - some of it even with Republican support! There are a lot of lists of successes out there (Google "Obama accomplishments"), and I won't try to enumerate them here. This article may be of interest - well written and pretty non-partisan, but somewhat long.