The Chimera of Bipartisanship
I am not alone in being puzzled by the preoccupation with the alleged need for bipartisanship in our politics. True, President Obama did made a big show when campaigning for the White House of calling for a new era on precisely this basis, but some, like the Washington Post's David Broder seem to have confounded rhetorical aspiration with real objectives.
Calls for unity from a politician have only ever meant falling in behind that politician. Since democratic politics consists of asserting alternative ideas and policies, unity is a chimera, not least in an elected legislature. There can be no true democratic politics where political uniformity exists.
In any functioning democracy, bipartisanship will be the exception, not the norm. In American practice, it has rarely meant more than a president appointing some members of the other party to cabinet and other posts and harnessing the conditional votes of a few congressional defectors.
Such is the case here: President Obama has retained Bush appointees Robert Gates at Defense, Ben Bernanke at the Federal Reserve and Robert Mueller at the FBI, and sought (unsuccessfully) Republican Senator Gregg as Commerce Secretary. His stimulus bill obtained the vote of three Republican senators. More than that he is unlikely to seek – or obtain.
Sometimes, politicians call for and receive national unity, but only in the face of a colossal upheaval like a world war. Otherwise, unity or bipartisanship are not leitmotifs of democratic governance. The most consequential twentieth century presidents like (the pre-war) Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman and Ronald Reagan did not traffic in this currency.
Truman, narrowly confirmed in office in 1948 with 301 electoral votes and a mere plurality of 49.6 percent, never asked for unity nor received it. Nor did George W. Bush, even when re-elected in 2004 by a small majority (286 votes and 50.7 percent of the vote).
What Roosevelt and Reagan obtained – as did Lyndon Johnson –was not unity, but preponderance, by virtue of their decisive sway over the electorate. Roosevelt and Johnson won handsomely their elections and enjoyed large majorities in Congress while Reagan, who also won handily, had a Republican-controlled Senate for part of his two terms.
Roosevelt's massive pre-war majorities (a landslide 423 electoral votes and 57.4 percent of the vote in 1932, followed by a whopping 523 electoral votes and 60.8 percent of the vote in 1936) afforded him exceptional opportunities to rule the roost and introduce a centralizing overhaul of government with scant curiosity about the views of subdued, Republican congressional dissentients.
Johnson's 1964 landslide (486 electoral votes and 61.1 percent of the vote) led to passage of an unprecedented amount of presidentially-favored social and economic legislation. Reagan (489 electoral votes and a 50.7 percent majority in 1980 and 525 electoral votes and a 58.8 percent majority in 1984) reconfigured the American economy and America's posture abroad.
Worthy or defective achievements, none were accomplished because of bipartisanship.
If history demonstrates that bipartisanship has played a very small role in recent American political history, why is it now hankered after like a holy grail?
The answer seems to be that, in times of economic trauma, many are drawn to politics as a form of transcendence, a substitute for religion. Such people not only want answers to practical problems but the comfort that stems from believing that there is consensus on the answers. Not feeling in their full health and strength, they weary of disagreements, competing ideas and the raucous emotions they engender.
Little wonder that totalitarian movements offering certitudes and release from spirtual labor have triumphed in societies more traumatized than our own.
From this spiritual weariness stems the centrist fallacy – the idea that splitting the difference between opposed positions is the acme of statesmanship and reason.
But, as Jonah Goldberg put it so well the other day, "If one side says we need a 1,000-foot bridge to span a canyon, and the other side says we don't need a bridge at all, the centrists will fight for a bridge that goes 500 feet and no farther, then pat themselves on the back." Expect to see more of this sort of nonsense in coming months.
Centrist pragmatism can produce bipartisanship when two sides are trying to iron out differences on a generally accepted path.
But there is no centrist pragmatism, bipartisanship – or logic – to such efforts when there is no agreement on the road to be taken.
Democrats are deluded if they expect Republicans to roll over and acquiesce to policies they have opposed and distrusted. And Republicans are dreaming if they believe that President Obama means to meet them halfway. He has the money and the majorities and, for the next two years, only public sentiment may act as his bridle, not bipartisanship.
Calls for unity from a politician have only ever meant falling in behind that politician. Since democratic politics consists of asserting alternative ideas and policies, unity is a chimera, not least in an elected legislature. There can be no true democratic politics where political uniformity exists.
In any functioning democracy, bipartisanship will be the exception, not the norm. In American practice, it has rarely meant more than a president appointing some members of the other party to cabinet and other posts and harnessing the conditional votes of a few congressional defectors.
Such is the case here: President Obama has retained Bush appointees Robert Gates at Defense, Ben Bernanke at the Federal Reserve and Robert Mueller at the FBI, and sought (unsuccessfully) Republican Senator Gregg as Commerce Secretary. His stimulus bill obtained the vote of three Republican senators. More than that he is unlikely to seek – or obtain.
Sometimes, politicians call for and receive national unity, but only in the face of a colossal upheaval like a world war. Otherwise, unity or bipartisanship are not leitmotifs of democratic governance. The most consequential twentieth century presidents like (the pre-war) Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman and Ronald Reagan did not traffic in this currency.
Truman, narrowly confirmed in office in 1948 with 301 electoral votes and a mere plurality of 49.6 percent, never asked for unity nor received it. Nor did George W. Bush, even when re-elected in 2004 by a small majority (286 votes and 50.7 percent of the vote).
What Roosevelt and Reagan obtained – as did Lyndon Johnson –was not unity, but preponderance, by virtue of their decisive sway over the electorate. Roosevelt and Johnson won handsomely their elections and enjoyed large majorities in Congress while Reagan, who also won handily, had a Republican-controlled Senate for part of his two terms.
Roosevelt's massive pre-war majorities (a landslide 423 electoral votes and 57.4 percent of the vote in 1932, followed by a whopping 523 electoral votes and 60.8 percent of the vote in 1936) afforded him exceptional opportunities to rule the roost and introduce a centralizing overhaul of government with scant curiosity about the views of subdued, Republican congressional dissentients.
Johnson's 1964 landslide (486 electoral votes and 61.1 percent of the vote) led to passage of an unprecedented amount of presidentially-favored social and economic legislation. Reagan (489 electoral votes and a 50.7 percent majority in 1980 and 525 electoral votes and a 58.8 percent majority in 1984) reconfigured the American economy and America's posture abroad.
Worthy or defective achievements, none were accomplished because of bipartisanship.
If history demonstrates that bipartisanship has played a very small role in recent American political history, why is it now hankered after like a holy grail?
The answer seems to be that, in times of economic trauma, many are drawn to politics as a form of transcendence, a substitute for religion. Such people not only want answers to practical problems but the comfort that stems from believing that there is consensus on the answers. Not feeling in their full health and strength, they weary of disagreements, competing ideas and the raucous emotions they engender.
Little wonder that totalitarian movements offering certitudes and release from spirtual labor have triumphed in societies more traumatized than our own.
From this spiritual weariness stems the centrist fallacy – the idea that splitting the difference between opposed positions is the acme of statesmanship and reason.
But, as Jonah Goldberg put it so well the other day, "If one side says we need a 1,000-foot bridge to span a canyon, and the other side says we don't need a bridge at all, the centrists will fight for a bridge that goes 500 feet and no farther, then pat themselves on the back." Expect to see more of this sort of nonsense in coming months.
Centrist pragmatism can produce bipartisanship when two sides are trying to iron out differences on a generally accepted path.
But there is no centrist pragmatism, bipartisanship – or logic – to such efforts when there is no agreement on the road to be taken.
Democrats are deluded if they expect Republicans to roll over and acquiesce to policies they have opposed and distrusted. And Republicans are dreaming if they believe that President Obama means to meet them halfway. He has the money and the majorities and, for the next two years, only public sentiment may act as his bridle, not bipartisanship.