James Morone writes in the New York Times:

[President Obama] seems eager to put aside small political differences and to restore a culture of cooperation in Washington. But it’s going to be a long, hard effort because, well, that golden bipartisan era never existed.

The popular myth of getting past politics, in its modern form, dates back to the 1880s, when reformers known as Mugwumps challenged the corrupt bosses, powerful parties and political machines. . . . And while the Mugwumps eventually achieved a lot of their reforms, their larger aspiration — nonpartisan politics — always slipped out of reach.

Morone then gives some examples, but I don’t think they make his case so well. For example, he wrotes:

Yet modern Mugwumps keep searching for a nonpartisan golden age to emulate. They point, for example, to the early years of the cold war when foreign policy consensus repudiated isolationism and engaged the world. That elite consensus never reached as far as Congress, where the House Un-American Activities Committee was hunting Joe McCarthy’s slippery list of Reds and traitors.

But NATO passed with bipartisan support. Beyond this, the 1950s and early 1960s were a relatively nonpartisan era by many measures.

Later, Morone writes:

Ronald Reagan’s fierce attachment to three verities — markets are good, government is bad, communism is evil — also meant little reaching out to the other side. His every move reverberated with the cold war philosophy he described so simply: “We win and they lose.”

But when Reagan was president, the House of Representatives was controlled by the Democratic party. So his programs had to have some bipartisan support.

Summary

I’m not saying that partisanship doesn’t work, or that Obama shouldn’t be partisan—or, for that matter, that congressional Republicans should be less partisan themselves. I’m just pointing out that, in some of these historical examples purporting to show partisanship, the actual story isn’t so simple.