Lamar Alexander is the latest elite to push the golden age of bipartisanship meme:
The No. 3 Republican in the Senate, Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, who attended one session with the president, recalled that in the 1960s, when he was a Congressional aide, Democrats and Republicans worked together on civil rights. He said he saw no possibility of a bipartisan health bill.“White House officials don’t want one or don’t know how to do one,” Mr. Alexander said.
First, as I've noted many times before, the bipartisanship of mid-century was a historical aberration driven by conservative Democrats who remained in their party due to the history of race in the South. After the parties realigned on race, the system returned to the norm of party polarization. As appealing as bipartisanship may seem to centrist pundits and minority party legislators, it came at a very high cost.
In addition, the issues are fundamentally different. The civil rights debate was bipartisan because civil rights split the party coalitions. By contrast, health care is an issue that aligns with the dominant cleavage between the two parties. In a more partisan era, there's no reason to expect either party to pass major domestic policy legislation in a bipartisan fashion.
Update 11/2 10:36 AM -- Matthew Yglesias expresses similar thoughts:
This is very confused, starting with the fact that Alexander started working as a Senate aide in 1967 by which time the main civil rights debate was over. Then any competent observer of American politics should realize that it’s no coincidence that the bipartisanship of the civil rights era vanished in the post-civil rights age. It was the debate over civil rights itself that created the unusual bipartisanship of mid-20th century America.
We don't have to go back to the sixties to find bipartisanship. As I recall, there was considerable bipartisanship during the early years of GW Bush's Presidency. No Child Left Behind was compromise between Bush and Ted Kennedy and was passed with bipartisan support. There was bipartisan support for the Patriot Act and other aspects of the War on Terror. There was bipartisan support for cutting taxes, for going to war in Afghanistan and for going to war in Iraq. There was bipartisan support for Bush's enormous effort against African AIDS.
As I recall, the Dems repudiated their positions on a number of issues, incliding the Patriot Act, the war in Iraq, and NCLB. At a certain point, they began to attack Bush on every possible issue, including issues where they had previously agreed with him.
Posted by: David | November 02, 2009 at 12:48 PM
David, some of things things you've laid out are not really accurate. Yes, there was initial bipartisan support for NCLB, Bush's AIDS initiative, and the Patriot Act.
But Democrats were well-divided in the lead up to the War in Iraq. The left was the primary opposition to the war, but they nominated a pro-war candidate for President and VP in 2004 (Sens. Kerry and Edwards).
This, despite the fact that there were many prominent Democrats who opposed authorizing the use of force. Among those who ran for president included Al Sharpton, Carol Moseley-Braun, Dennis Kucinich, and Howard Dean (I don't remember where Sen. Bob Graham stood). Then there were plenty of prominent Democrats who opposed the war from the get go: Robert Byrd, Ted Kennedy, John Conyers, Barbara Boxer, et al.
It took until 2006 for Congressional Republicans to begin bailing on Iraq as well, thus making it seemingly "bipartisan" again.
And one more note, if the Republicans were so bipartisan, why did Sen. Jim Jeffords defect to the Democratic caucus in May 2001? There are acute reasons, but moreover, we had a president who acted as though he came in to power with a broad mandate and not someone who had the humility to understand his ascension came under questionable circumstances.
Posted by: metrichead.blogspot.com | November 03, 2009 at 01:38 PM