Lesson learned?

This morning, Mr. Obama has a choice. He can double down, as his aides have predicted he would. He can come out with guns blazing to implement as much of his agenda as he can with questionable executive orders and continue to shun compromise with Congress. Or he can emulate Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan, who, faced with a divided government, succeeded with reasonable compromise.

When Mr. Clinton’s party lost control of Congress in 1994, he lost the ability to set the agenda. Without the Senate or the House, Democrats couldn’t block legislation. Mr. Clinton signed much of what the new Republican Congress sent him, claiming that reforms in welfare and the deficit were his ideas in the first place.