‘Tis the season for year-end assessments. As the pundit class weighs in on Obama’s year in office, one meme has been particularly frustrating: the judgment that Obama “failed” to bring bipartisanship back to Washington.
Yesterday’s The Hill has the latest entry in the bogus narrative. “Obama’s first year yields few results in drive for bipartisanship” reads the headline. It then gives the floor to Republican sources:
“You might remember that Senate Republicans began the year hopeful that the president would actually make good on his campaign promises to reach across the aisle and build consensus,” said one GOP aide, who argued the divide began with the stimulus.
“People were skeptical of Obama’s rhetoric, but nobody could have predicted the surge in partisanship that his administration would wage over the first year. And their fierce partisan approach has become a major reason why independent voters are sprinting away from Democrats.”
In true he-said-she-said fashion, The Hill then gives some Democrats a chance to respond, without bothering to weigh in on who’s speaking in good faith and who’s spinning.
William Galston, in his evaluation of President Obama’s first year in American Interest magazine, offers a similiar take:
[T]he President never tried very hard to render bipartisanship a matter of substance as well as tone, making it all but certain that he would not redeem an important promissory note he had issued to the American people during the campaign.
Newsweek‘s Evan Thomas said much the same thing a month ago:
Obama tried to foster bipartisanship at the outset of his administration, but he didn’t try very hard, and his fellow Democrats can be just as rigidly partisan on the left.
It’s indisputable that Washington is as rancorous and polarized as ever. And there’s no question that Obama may have set himself up for criticism by campaigning as a post-partisan figure who could bridge the Washington divide.
But to blame Obama for failed bipartisanship is to blame the only grown-up in the room for the mess the kids are making. The two real culprits are a Republican Party that refuses to act responsibly, and a mainstream press that is unable or unwilling to call them on it.
What we have in the GOP today is a party that has lost all interest in policy now that it’s out of power. It has one goal: to destroy the Obama presidency. Every hand extended by the other side is to be rejected. The Republicans know what they’re doing — the media, true to form, has stuck to its pox-on-both-houses posture. Never mind that the president has made an honest effort to get Republicans interested in the idea of governing again: if Republicans keeps saying no, it must be because Obama’s not asking often and nicely enough.
Take the claim that the stimulus represented a violation of Obama’s pledge to reach out to the other side. Here was a stimulus plan that was one-third tax cuts designed to appeal to Republicans — tax cuts that economists agreed would be less than stimulative. Despite that sop to conservatives, it got only three GOP votes, including one from a Republican who would soon make the switch to the other side, Arlen Specter.
To think that Obama could have won more GOP votes had he given in a little more is to misread the GOP. The stated Republican objection to the stimulus was that there was too much spending in it — which is exactly what stimulus is. The hidden Republican objection, of course, was that it just might work. And if there’s one thing the GOP is deathly afraid of, it’s the rebound under Obama’s watch of an economy that they wrecked.
Take another example: health care. Some have complained that the Democrats rammed through their bill without Republican input. Does anyone not remember the slow-as-molasses work of the Senate Finance Committee on its bill, geared specifically toward winning the support of Republicans?
The Republican idea of compromise is that Obama enact Republican policies. Anything short of that means that he must not be serious about reaching out. Even policies that won Republican support in the past are now encountering opposition, lest Obama claim a bipartisan win. (Exhibit A: John McCain, hitherto a strong supporter of cap-and-trade, has now flip-flopped on it, calling it part of a “far left” agenda.)
True bipartisanship — the idea of two parties arguing in earnest over the direction of the country and reaching the necessary compromises to make sure everything runs smoothly — is impossible with the current Republican Party. Obama has made every effort to reach out to Republicans. And as president, annoying as it may be for some progressives, he should continue to seek the higher ground and not get caught up in the daily trench warfare. But there’s only so much one person can do in dealing with a rabid and unbending opposition.
A certain madness has gripped the GOP. Many in the media know it — and yet their stories barely mention the phenomenon. The same kabuki dance keeps getting enacted news cycle after news cycle. Fact-free spin is treated as a legitimate retort to good-faith argument. The enablers of a Republican Party gone rogue, the media are a key contributor to our broken politics. Only when the news stops giving politicians and parties the incentive to act irresponsibly can we expect irresponsible actors to even begin thinking about changing their ways.
