Last night, on Rachel Maddow, Barack Obama said the following:
MADDOW: And so, you have the opportunity to say John McCain, George Bush, you’re wrong. You also have the opportunity to say, conservatism has been bad for America. But, you haven’t gone there either.

OBAMA: … I know you’ve been cruising for a bruising for a while here, looking for a fight out there. But, I just think people are tired of that kind of back and forth, tit for tat, ideological approach to the problems.

Now, there is no doubt that there is a set of premises in the reigning Republican ideology that I just think are wrong. This whole notion, and then it’s been captured by this back and forth about whether I’m a redistributor, I think is a great example. The notion that the progressive income tax, which was instituted by Teddy Roosevelt, supposedly John McCain’s hero, is somehow un-American, I think is an example of how people have gone way off track.
Over the past two weeks, in response to increasingly loud attacks on the progressive income tax, we have been making this exact point: that Teddy Roosevelt, like many leaders of his time, strongly supported a progressive tax system. In fact on (appropriately) April 14th 1906, Roosevelt said in a speech:
As a matter of personal conviction, and without pretending to discuss the details or formulate the system, I feel that we shall ultimately have to consider the adoption of some such scheme as that of a progressive tax on all fortunes, beyond a certain amount, either given in life or devised or bequeathed upon death to any individual.
This sentiment was shared by Republicans and Democrats alike so overwhelmingly, that in 1913 Congress amended the Constitution to allow for a progressive tax system.

Apparently Obama is indeed a consensus-builder – consensus says, we all love Teddy Roosevelt (except, perhaps, Joe).