Genuine bipartisanship assumes an honest process of give-and-take, and that the quality of the compromise is measured by how well it serves some agreed-upon goal, whether better schools or lower deficits. This in turn assumes that the majority will be constrained — by an exacting press corps and ultimately an informed electorate — to negotiate in good faith.
If these conditions do not hold — if nobody outside Washington is really paying attention to the substance of the bill, if the true costs . . . are buried in phony accounting and understated by a trillion dollars or so — the majority party can begin every negotiation by asking for 100% of what it wants, go on to concede 10%, and then accuse any member of the minority party who fails to support this ‘compromise’ of being ‘obstructionist.’
For the minority party in such circumstances, ‘bipartisanship’ comes to mean getting chronically steamrolled, although individual senators may enjoy certain political rewards by consistently going along with the majority and hence gaining a reputation for being ‘moderate’ or ‘centrist.’
So wrote Obama in his book The Audacity of Hope a few years ago (as quoted in a WSJ op-ed by William McGurn, h/t AoSHQ).
McGurn points out that Obama spectacularly failed to meet his own definition of bipartisanship, despite all the campaign rhetoric about moving beyond partisanship. McGurn concludes by wondering “if he will be held to that standard by an ‘exacting’ press corps he says is essential to ensuring that a ruling party negotiates in good faith.”
I won’t be holding my breath.
