What is it with the media and their consistent appeals to bipartisanship? There’s a reason the two parties rarely agree with each other and that is that they have contrasting world views. The Unity ‘08 crowd believes America can solve all its problems if the two parties would just work together (and get behind a billionaire who can basically buy the White House). But the two parties do work together. That’s how legislation gets passed. And despite what some in Washington might have us believe, the system mostly works. I believe the Republicans are being more than a bit childish in their constant threats of veto (they are the most obstructionist minority since records have been kept), but that is their right. However, somehow, this refusal on their part to compromise at all with the Democrats is not portrayed in the media as a matter concerning the actions of the Republican party, but rather, about partisanship in general. Apparently, we all need to forget our principles and come to some civil agreement about the way the world should work.
Some go even further and lay the blame at the feet of the Democrats. As always, The Heritage Foundation can be counted on for some top quality spin:
"You can almost argue that the Republicans learned form the Democrats
when they were filibustering Republican judges effectively," Brian
Darling, director of U.S. Senate Relations at the conservative Heritage
Foundation, told The Huffington Post. "[Reid] should not bring up such
controversial pieces of legislation… any measure that puts conditions
on the way the war is fought is going to be filibustered by
Republicans. So bringing it up again and again without extended session
shows the Democratic leadership is not really committed to passing
these measures, just in making statements."
The basic thrust of this statement is that the Democrats have no right to attempt to pass legislation supported by their party and an overwhelming majority of Americans. To attempt to do so is "just making [a] statement." It’s our fault the Republicans have to threaten to filibuster so often. How dare we try to enforce the will of the American people?
Yet the David Broders of the world still believe that there should be no acrimony between Democrats and Republicans (and isn’t odd that calls for bipartisanship were far rarer when the GOP was impeaching Clinton for lying about his sex life?). Moreover, they actually blame Congress’s low approval ratings on the Democratic leadership’s failure to adequately adhere to Bush’s demands. But any grade school student could tell you that the Dems low support numbers indicate that it is the base, not the mythical "center" which is dissatisfied with them. And the reason we find ourselves dissatisfied is that our party (especially Sen. Harry Reid) allow themselves to get rolled time and time again. They promise aggressive action, and then they fail to deliver. We’re very close now to the renewal of the FISA debate. Many Dems seem pressured to give in and excuse law breaking, lest they look weak on national security. But a nation is only as valuable as the principles which guide it. We can erode our privacy protections piece by piece, we can tell those who broke the law at the President’s suggestion that it’s all okay, but in doing so, we sacrifice a large piece of what it is to be an American.
Because it’s not okay, and despite Nixon’s proclamation, things aren’t simply legal just because they’re signed off by the President. The President is not above the laws, and neither are the companies he coerces into his illegal programs. These telecoms have some of the best lawyers in the business — they knew exactly what they were getting into.
And I know it’s been a long time since Democrats have had the ability to actually govern. I know that for the last 20 years the right-wing echo chamber has been systematically destroying the image of our party. But what the Dems fail to realize is that they finally have their own echo chamber. They finally have a vehicle through which they can get across their message. We are the netroots, and we are ready for a fight. I don’t want to fight Republicans from some sheer irrational core of hatred. I want to fight them because their ideas are bad — they’re bad for the country, they’re bad for the world. You need only look at a newspaper to see the results of Republican governance: a tanking economy, an armed forces bogged down in a civil war, a complete failure to address climate change, and a systematic erosion of civil liberties.
This is not what America should be. But the answers to our prayers are not to be found in the bipartisanship utopia which exists in the imagination of the beltway insiders. As I’ve argued before, until conservatives are willing to agree to some basic empirical reality, there’s very little hope that we can strike a compromise. It was a Bush staff member who warned us that while they were "creating" history, we would be left to simply analyze the after-effects. But no one can simply "create" history. The hubris it took for this administration to think so is almost beyond comprehension. The result of that hubris is undeniable.
