Mixing it up

I haven't exactly done a scientific study, but it seems to me that the country does best when the President is in one party and the Congress dominated by the other, certainly in my lifetime (Reagan, Clinton).  I've been trying to figure out why this is, and it seems to me that it's because they bring different strengths to governing (despite the fact that they are alarmingly similar in some ways).  Republicans "get" the big picture about economics and foreign affairs and put more emphasis on the macro issues.  Democrats concentrate on the small pictures of human rights and individual suffering.  The big picture without the humanizing effect of the small picture leads to imperialism of all kinds of stripes, where as the small picture without the realism of the big picture leads to inefficiency and overspending trying to fix things that will never be fixed (i.e., "The poor are always with us").