Washington's Unhealthy Fetish for Bipartisanship

Monday, 21st December 2009

So health care has its 60 votes and, since there are, depending upon how one classifies Joe Lieberman, 60 Democrats in the United States Senate all those votes are Democratic votes. No Republican crossed the aisle. At this point you might be forgiven that this is how politics is supposed to work: the side with the majority wins. But that reckons without the amusing wisdom of the Washington "centrist" establishment that measures a bill's worth not on its merits but by the extent to which it may be considered "bi-partisan". Thus David Gergen, with David Broder the keeper of the faux-moderate flame, whines:

"In my judgment it's a tragedy for the country to have a bill this important, a historic piece of legislation, pass with only one party voting for it."

Oh noes! Gergen who, as the cable networks always remind us, first served in the Methuselah administration, demonstrates one of the ways in which politics in Washington, often scorned for its cynicism, is actually also hopeless naive and even infantile. It is the view that while the House represents the people's vulgar desires, the Senate is filled with upstanding gentlemen (and the occasional gentle lady) whose wisdom is such that Pericles himself might be intimidated were he to share a chamber with such titans as Ben Nelson, Arlen Specter and David Vitter. As any sensible person could tell you this is awful tommyrot.

The charitable interpretation is that this is another manifestation of exceptional American idealism. But actually, it's the elevation of a perceived ideal form of politics that bears no relation whatsoever to the reality of politics as it is, and should be, conducted. Bi-partisanship, in this sense, is a mighty con designed to offer each party legislative cover. Don't blame us, the other guys voted for it too! Dividing lines in politics are useful for without them what is there to help voters choose the lesser of two evils come election-time?

Consequently, the Republican party's unanimous opposition - thus far - to the health care bill is actually a healthy development, not a descent into vulgar tribalism. Perhaps the GOP interpretation of the bill is correct (it may be) and, certainly, they might have helped build a bill less poisonous to their preferences had they participated in the process. But I see no reason to mourn their failure to do so. Alea iacta est and let the voters decide.

There may well be occasions in which a degree of bipartisan comity is useful but it's hard to see why tinkering with health insurance is one of them. For that matter, as Steve Benen says, Gergenism demands that if you have a majority you shouldn't be allowed to use it.

Gergenism, however, sees Washington as the vital glue without which the United States would fall apart. Thus anything that attracts bi-partisan support is good and anything that might be termed divisive is bad. (It doesn't matter much which party is in power). The merits of any actual decision - the Iraq War for instance - are less important than attracting cross-party support. Needless to say a bill with bi-partisan support is just as likely to be a terrible bill as one without it.

Here, one might observe, that Sarah Palin's admirers have a point: her sin, in terms of the Gergen-Broder axis - is not that she's ignorant (the District is amply stocked with politicians who shouldn't be trusted to run a raffle) but that she divides people and does so clearly and, I suppose, honestly. The objection, in other words, is to the style of her politics not its substance.

This is absurd but it explains why a Joe Lieberman - as self-interested and conniving and duplicitous as the best of 'em - is able to present himself as some kind of sage while, to take a recent example, Rick Santorum was quite the wrong kind of person for the United States Senate.

Politics isn't an especially noble business and one of the more infantile Washington delusions is to pretend to believe that it is. If such muddle-thinking didn't have consequences then it wouldn't matter much but it does since it elevates politics to a status it doesn't merit and demands that no-one be permitted to see the game for what it really is.

Filed under: Congress (73 more articles) , Washington (165 more articles)

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ndm

December 21st, 2009 5:58pm Report this comment

I wonder if Gergen-Broder were similarly offended by politics at a time when the following could end an article in the LA Times:

-- This was the key to Rove's overall strategy of building slender but committed majorities -- sometimes called the 50%-plus-1 approach. It was the most controversial weapon in Rove's arsenal, and the one critics say may spoil his dream of a long-term Republican majority.

This was sufficiently understood at the time that this article came first on a search for "rove strategy 50% plus 1."

MattF

December 21st, 2009 8:39pm Report this comment

This leaves out the actual political history of the US Congress of the past several years. As recently as Bush's first term, my Congressional representative (Connie Morella) was a Republican who was well to the left of many Democrats. But those days are gone, baby, gone.

And it's not just nostalgia to regret this. I don't normally have much good to say about David Broder, but he's right that Congress worked better and did better things when people like Morella were were in it.

ndm

December 22nd, 2009 1:05am Report this comment

Paul Krugmann points out the craziness of supermajority voting requirement that has crept into the Senate more or less in step with its increased partisanship:

-- The political scientist Barbara Sinclair has done the math. In the 1960s, she finds, “extended-debate-related problems” — threatened or actual filibusters — affected only 8 percent of major legislation. By the 1980s, that had risen to 27 percent. But after Democrats retook control of Congress in 2006 and Republicans found themselves in the minority, it soared to 70 percent.

This supermajority requirement is not constitutional it is merely a rule of the Senate. Ironically, it would only take a simple majority to do away with it.

Partisanship is indeed a fine thing when majority rule is sufficient. But it is not a good thing when supermajorities are required (as with the California budget) or become the norm. The problem is that the minority party is under little pressure to ameliorate its most-disliked policies because it being a large enough minority is suffucient to stop the majority from implementing policies. So the real problem is not the lack of partisanship but the existence of supermajority requirements.

ndm

December 22nd, 2009 1:35am Report this comment

Marc Ambinder, of The Atlantic Monthly, writes:

-- the idea that HIS compromises are what killed the public option or Medicare buy-in, the anti-trust exemption repeal for insurers, significant reform of the pharmaceutical industry -- is testimony to the bipartisan nature of the bill. That Republicans could not bring themselves to support it -- some of them wanted specific things and didn't get them so they dropped out; others succumbed to in-group pressure -- should not reflect poorly on the White House. (my emphasis)

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