Obama might believe the GOP wasn't elected on a mandate of gridlock...

... but he doesn't seem to really be holding out for a lot of progress being made in the next Congress.

“They are not going to want to just obstruct, that they’re going to want to engage constructively,” he said of his Republican adversaries. “And then we’re going to have a whole bunch of time next year for some serious philosophical debates.”

There's nothing like "whole bunch of time" for "some serious philosophical debates" to really inspire a belief that any significant legislation will be passed in the 112th Congress.