President Obama should bear in mind that he's not President Clinton.

Both Democrats and Republicans on Capitol Hill have their talking points ready in the event of a federal government shutdown that some say could occur on or not too long after March 4.

Democrats are preparing to charge the GOP with being reckless and cruel by proposing spending cuts that would be damaging to our fragile economy. Republicans will contend that Democrats cannot abandon their free-spending ways and are clinging to a profligate past no matter how deep the country is in debt.

But it need not come to that, and it won't come to that, if leaders of both parties are sincere about avoiding a budget impasse that would lead to a government shutdown.

There's less to the substance of government shutdowns than most people would imagine. But the political perceptions that surround them are an altogether different story.

The narrative that surrounds the brief 1995-96 shutdown is that it was the political ruin for congressional Republicans and the political salvation of President Bill Clinton, who went on to win a resounding second-term election victory two years later.

Little remembered is what came out of that political face-off over spending. Clinton and former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich later were able to bring federal spending under control and that compromise, combined with a resurgent U.S. economy, helped lay the groundwork for prosperity.

But it took both sides to make it happen then, and it will take both sides to make it happen now.

Each party has its share of ideological zealots, people who take the position that it's their way or the highway. That's a fine position to take for those who have the political juice to pull it off.

But the reality is that the U.S. has a divided government, one that is more Democratic than Republican.

President Obama and the Democrats control the executive branch and the U.S. Senate, one-half of the legislative branch. Republicans control the U.S. House, one-half of the legislative branch.

Neither side can get all that it wants, so if they want to make a deal each will have to give something to get something.

Because the Democratic Congress did not pass a budget last year for the current fiscal year, the federal government is now running on the strength of a continuing spending resolution scheduled to expire March 4.

Republicans, terrified of the red ink menace, have proposed continuing to fund the government but at a lower level in the portion of the budget that is described as "discretionary non-security" programs.

Those programs, which exclude the military, Social Security and Medicare, make up only 12 percent of federal spending, and it is out of that 12 percent share that GOP legislators say they intend to seek $60 billion in cuts.

Democrats respond that is too much to cut. They prefer to cut nothing, instead freezing spending at current levels for five years.

Both parties must recognize that neither can force its will on the other, and that they must reach a middle ground to prevent a government shutdown.

That leaves each side with a political calculation. Clinton profited politically from the 1995-96 shutdown. But that was then, and this is now. The public is in an uproar over government spending and debt, not just at the federal levels but in most of the states including the bankrupt state of Illinois. There's no guarantee that the Democrats will be the winners of another shutdown. It might simply reinforce ugly stereotypes of Democrats as spendthrifts who refuse to face reality. Then again, it might not.

Each side has much to gain from negotiating a settlement of their budgetary differences and much to lose from a government shutdown. Let's hope they keep that in mind.