Bipartisan Bifurcation

Two weeks after Republican Scott Brown was elected to the US Senate, President Obama, speaking to the Democratic Congressional leadership announced that “the election of Scott Brown gives the Republicans a 41-59 majority in the Senate.” The statement was obviously directed at his party to act like a majority and govern in a way that they had not managed to do in the 13 months since gaining control of both houses of Congress.

Earlier this week moderate Democratic Senator Evan Byah of Indiana announced that he would not seek re-election this fall, noting that he no longer enjoyed serving and stating that the virulent partisan atmosphere in the Senate was like daily “going to war.” Michael Steele, chairman of the Republican National Committee, responded by noting Byah was just running scared and feared losing this November like many other Democrats of late (a statement that seems to confirm Byah’s basic point).

Yesterday, the Washington Post column by Ezra Klein noted that several private economic and market watch groups had concluded that the Obama stimulus package has, indeed, been successful. David Moody of the New York Times wrote, "Perhaps the best-known economic research firms are IHS Global Insight, Macroeconomic Advisers and Moody’s Economy.com. They all estimate that the bill has added 1.6 million to 1.8 million jobs so far and that its ultimate impact will be roughly 2.5 million jobs. The Congressional Budget Office, an independent agency, considers these estimates to be conservative." Of course you would never know this listening to conservative media outlets who consistently run some story of a small town mayor who spent some infinitesimal amount of stimulus money for some ridiculous project or that a sign was put up along the road announcing that a project was paid for by stimulus money.

Next week the President will host a meeting of Congressional leaders from both parties to work on a compromise to the stalled health care bill. This meeting will occur in the shadow of recently released corporate earnings reports by the five leading health insurance companies announcing record profits for the last fiscal year, a 56% increase over fiscal 2008. These earnings coming at a time when many of these same companies raising premiums on their policyholders. Ironically, the health care bill that was passed through the Senate in December 2009 is not fundamentally different than one proposed by the Republicans during the Clinton administration. The only difference seems to be that now the Democrats are in the majority and any reform would be seen as a victory for the Democrats.

It is no surprise that bipartisanship in government, it seems at every level, is virtually impossible. The frustration that most Americans feel about this situation is expressed in some of the latest job approval rating of Congress. According to a recent CBS / New York Times poll 75% of Americans disapprove of the job performance of Congress; Gallup places the number at 78%. The gridlock in Washington and that often characterizes state and even local government has become poisoned by the self-interested ambitions of individual politicians and political parties. Two observations would seem to highlight.

First, when the Democrats had a 60 vote majority in the Senate it seemed that anything they wanted to do was virtually guaranteed unless any single member sought personal political gain over the intentions of the group. This is exactly what happened as majority leader Harry Reid had to court every vote from moderate Republicans and rogue Democrats to try and get a bill passed. Senator Ben Nelson (D-Neb) held out his health care vote to procure a 45 million dollar deal for his state. Joe Lieberman has lately made a career out of holding out his vote on nearly every important issue, a tactic that get him constant press coverage and spots on virtually all of the cable channels and Sunday morning political commentary shows.

Second is that government is no longer about governing, which use to mean promoting the general welfare, but about politics which is a game more concerned with winning and losing. In such a climate one cannot be bipartisan for in doing so the majority party would tend to receive the majority of credit. In essence, it is politically better for a minority party to stall legislation than to work with the majority. Failure to pass legislation will be perceived as weakness by the electorate and have favorable consequences for the minority in the next election cycle. This certainly seems to be the strategy of the Republicans who recently have become the “just say no” party in hopes of significant gains in the November mid-term elections.

The problem, of course, is that there are significant issues regarding the public good that have to be addressed and must be addressed now. Health care cost, by all projections, are predicted to continue to rise, a problem which will hamper the economy. The national unemployment rate is approximately 8% not counting those who have given up looking for work. The federal deficit continues to rise and cannot be controlled, let alone paid down, simply by reducing spending. As the population ages, the demands of Social Security payments and Medicare reimbursements will even further strain an already bloated federal deficit. This will require hard choices regarding where to find revenue from both sides of the aisle (and does either party, but especially Republicans, have a vested interest in raising taxes?).


The early 20th c. journalist and essayist H.L. Mencken summed up the current situation for us when he wrote, “People deserve the government they get, and they deserve to get it good and hard.” Has our seeming insatiable appetite for spectacle lead to politics being more fascinating than good governance? Has our own desire to promote self-interest lead us to continue to tolerate, even venerate, politicians who only promote theirs? Has the fear and insecurity that current economic conditions or the threats created by a “war on terror” that can never end made us so self-focused that we fail to consider each other—and has this fear and insecurity been manipulated by others to promote their own selfish gains?

The preamble to the Constitution begins “We the people.” In the Gettysburg Address Abraham Lincoln noted that we are a “government of the people, by the people, for the people.” Government exists to promote the general welfare and the common good. Lincoln, in his first inaugural addressed, said to all Americans that “we must not be enemies” and to appealed to the “better angels of our nature.” Unless “we the people” begin to think in terms of the common good, not simply our own self-interest, will be never get representatives that will be compelled to act in the same way. We cannot simply “throw the bums out” (as many Tea Party members advocate), for the problems noted above will just change sides of the aisle. Historically, real changes to government in our country are bottom-up; grass roots movements that reflect the character, not simply the anger or fear, of the people. As the words of the proverb state, “where there is no vision [beyond ourselves] the people perish.”