At the White House “fiscal responsibility summit” last week, Rep. Joe Barton of Arlington  very publicly urged the president that if he truly seeks bipartisanship, he should lean on his own congressional allies — the ones Republicans accuse of routinely cramming bills through with little GOP input.

He said it more gently than that. But that was his point.

“It’s very easy in the House, since it’s set up to get things done quickly if the majority’s united, to forget about the minority,” Barton , a Republican, told Barack Obama.

The president’s response was equally clear: He’s not about to break a sweat butting heads with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid . “I don’t want to interject myself too much into congressional politics,” he said.

The exchange illuminated a curious dynamic.

A wildly popular president who promises a post-partisan era won’t lean on allies to abandon the traditional playbook.

Maybe he’s complicit in a good cop/bad cop drama. Maybe he lacks the clout to take on Pelosi and Reid.

So either the president is hypocritical or weak. Points well scored, Mr. Barton.

Of course, in the dozen recent years when Republicans controlled the House, Democrats routinely cried foul, too. House rules all but encourage a one-sided process. There’s even a name for the policy: the Hastert Doctrine, named for Dennis Hastert, the Republican speaker who articulated the job description Pelosi now seems to be following: Why build coalitions when all you really have to do is satisfy the “majority of the majority”?

Barton says he had no ulterior motives when he raised the issue with Obama on national television.

“All I was trying to do was state the obvious,” he said. “He’s from Chicago. He knows what hardball politics is all about.”

But, he said, Obama should take the long view. Democrats’ solid majority can’t last forever.

The $787 billion stimulus plan, enacted without any GOP votes in the House and just three in the Senate, reflects a refusal to seek common ground, Barton said.

“You can get a lot done in the short term by just ramming things down people’s throats,” Barton said. “But that stuff doesn’t last because the other side always makes a comeback and they’ll undo the more extreme elements of the program.”