It took Barack Obama just two days after he was sworn in as president to toss overboard the “bipartisan” malarkey that had been one of the dominant themes of his campaign narrative.
On Jan. 22, he invited top congressional leaders from both parties to the White House to discuss his ideas for an economic stimulus plan. One of the goals of the meeting was to promote bipartisanship, but after listening to Republicans gripe about some of his proposed measures, Obama quieted them by saying, quite simply, “I won.”
The stimulus bill was subsequently passed by both the House of Representatives and the Senate, with the vote in both chambers breaking down almost perfectly along party lines. It’s been straight downhill since then on the hands-across-Congress front, with the sniping and potshotting escalating steadily to the point where last week Rush Limbaugh called bipartisanship “a false premise” and said that any good Republican should actually be hoping for Obama’s plan to fail.
So much for Obama’s vow of “an end to the petty grievances and false promises, the recriminations and worn-out dogmas, that for far too long have strangled our politics.”
Bipartisanship is one of those political ideals, like its kissing cousins “centrism,” “compromise” and “consensus,” to which everyone feels they have to pay lip service, and being against it is like being against motherhood or chocolate cake. Except that when people invoke its virtues they often fudge just what it is they are getting at.
Certainly a “bipartisan” political culture that makes a point of talking to one’s political opponents as well-intentioned people who actually have the nation’s best interests at heart is not a bad thing. Along with this goes a willingness to take good ideas, no matter where they come from, a genuinely pragmatic habit of mind that every political leader would do well to cultivate.
Bipartisanship is also an occasionally necessary tactic. In a democracy, every leader will at times find it necessary to bring at least some members of the opposition on board.
But in each of these cases, negotiation and compromise is a means to an end, a political instrument useful when it helps bring about a desired policy outcome. As Obama himself replied to the parade of journalists demanding to know why his bipartisan agenda went sour so quickly, the bottom line when it comes to the recovery package is “does it create or save jobs”—a goal about which there can be no compromise.
As Arianna Huffington put it recently, the “Washington definition” of centrism or bipartisanship, though, boils down to this: going to the other party, splitting any differences you have, patting each other on the pack about how nice and civil you are, and moving on. This kind of politics is dangerous, and not in the way its supporters would like.
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