Mitch McConnell has tried to thwart Obama's presidency. Will Obama return the favor?

Hope and change has returned to Washington.

All of a sudden, Republicans are optimistic about bipartisan compromise. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) — soon to be the majority leader — is eager to legislate, to get stuff done with the Democratic president.

In fact, being Senate majority leader — an effective, statesmanlike majority leader — has been a lifelong goal for McConnell, according to former colleagues and confidantes. "We're going to pass legislation," McConnell said Wednesday. "This gridlock and dysfunction can be ended." He shot a warning at the obstruction-minded in his caucus: "There will be no government shutdown or default on the national debt."

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Those weren't off-the-cuff comments. "Within hours of solidifying their control of Congress," report Lori Montgomery and Robert Costa at The Washington Post, "McConnell and House Speaker John A. Boehner were quietly laying plans for a series of quick votes in January aimed at erasing their obstructionist image ahead of the 2016 elections."

President Obama says he got the message, that people don't want gridlock. "It's time for us to take care of business," he said Wednesday, adding: "Congress will pass some bills I cannot sign. I'm pretty sure I will take some actions that some in Congress will not like." But Obama has known that the country wants Washington to "take care of business" for six years. And he is aware that Mitch McConnell is a big reason it hasn't.

According to exit polls, the electorate that threw out the Democrats on Tuesday is angry at Washington. About 60 percent are angry or frustrated at the Obama White House — but an equal number feel the same way about McConnell and other GOP leaders in Congress.

Books and plenty of heavily researched articles have been written detailing the plans McConnell and his counterparts in the House GOP leadership made, weeks before Obama even took office in 2009, to put up a united front against the popular president-elect who had promised to restore bipartisanship — hope and change — to Washington.

Democrats had just stomped the GOP in the congressional vote, too, taking a 60-seat majority in the Senate and expanding their solid majority in the House, picking up 24 seats. With the economy on the brink, Democrats felt they had a mandate; Obama wanted bipartisan buy-in on the solutions; Republicans said no. With few exceptions, they haven't stopped saying no. Now they need Obama's cooperation. Will he say yes?

Probably sometimes. Maybe a lot. Obama has two years left, and there's a good chance he has his legacy in mind and things he still has a shot at accomplishing. But there has to be a temptation to get back at McConnell and his cynical, nakedly hardball plan to kneecap Obama's presidency — and encouragement from that strategy's success.

In two years, McConnell's Republicans have to defend 24 Senate seats to the Democrats' 10. And McConnell will be under pressure from his caucus's presidential hopefuls to show that the GOP can govern.

"Right now, we are helping destroy each other," Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) tells The New York Times. "I would like to think we can work together." But the centrist Democrat, whom McConnell will need on some votes, sees the risk for the GOP, too. Republicans "have a golden opportunity," he noted. "If they get that and fail miserably, it is very bleak for them in 2016."

Let's hope the president proves to be a bigger man than McConnell. Still, it would be hard to blame him if he took the advice the conservative stalwarts over at National Review are aiming at McConnell: Keep Washington a stagnant pool of gridlock and antipathy for two more years.