Conservative

By John Fay

The last truly bipartisan presidential election in American history was in 1824. In this election there were four major candidates: John Quincy Adams, Andrew Jackson, Henry Clay and William Crawford.

None of them were backed by an official political machine; they were all Democrats. None of them really had much of a platform, just personality differences that commanded loyalty from certain factions. In the election itself, the results were confusing, frustrating and ultimately dissatisfactory to everybody.

Nobody won a majority in the Electoral College, and the winner of the tiny popular vote, Jackson, lost the presidency to Adams, who had more supporters in the House of Representatives. In short, the entire election was a chaotic mess with poorly defined issues that left the losers embittered and everyone confused.

The American people ought to remember this, because the reason we have partisan politics is that politics without partisanship really doesn’t work.

If President Obama did not know this before, he is certainly learning this now with the fight Republicans are giving him over his stimulus package. I was interested to read today how happy Democrats in the Senate are about the prospect of receiving three Republican votes in support of their bill.

This is an indication of how ineffective bipartisan attempts have been; in the House, not a single Republican supported Obama’s stimulus package. Throughout the debate, Obama did a distinctly bad job of reaching out to the opposition for support.

When speaking to the Republicans he pompously declared, “You can’t listen to Rush Limbaugh and get things done.” Among other things, such a statement would be deeply insulting because what Obama implied is that anyone who refused to support his bill was a talk show host’s stooge.

Apparently it never really occurred to the president that maybe the Republicans would refuse to support the package because they thought it was a bad bill. The president’s failure here is a fundamental unwillingness to acknowledge the integrity of his opponents. When, in his inauguration, he called for an end to “the worn-out dogmas that for too long have strangled our politics,” he ignored the fact that a lot of Republicans don’t think that belief in a market economy, which his stimulus bill undermines, is a worn-out dogma.

The truth of the matter is that there was never any real chance bipartisanship would take hold in Washington with the advent of a new administration, and I think Obama knew that. He doesn’t want our country to return to the chaotic nonsense of an era “without partisanship” like what we saw in 1824. However, if he has proved to be nothing else, Obama is a shrewd reader of the American people, and the American people right now mistakenly believe that partisanship is bad. By branding every criticism of his administration as a “worn-out dogma,” Obama may successfully gain the upper hand in the political debate. This is a clever political move, but it is neither honest nor new. Politicians from the founding of our country have trumpeted the merits of bipartisanship only to resort to partisan politics when they realized there was no way to be bipartisan without compromising their values.

If President Obama truly wanted to show us change we can believe in, his rhetoric during this debate would have been very different.

He would have forthrightly told the American people, “Look, I am partisan, and I am going to advance my own agenda for the good of the nation. My opponents disagree and I respect that, but I am obligated to do what I think is right.”

Instead, he cynically placed his opponents in an impossible situation in which they either had to vote against their principles or be labeled as partisan hacks.

It’s a tried and true political strategy, but it isn’t “change we can believe in.”

Reach columnist John Fay at opinion@dailyuw.com.

Liberal

By Greg Ryan

Over the last two weeks President Obama has managed to demonstrate his bipartisan bona fide with lots of giveaways to the other side, while simultaneously giving Republicans enough rope to hang themselves from the soon-to-be-law stimulus bill.

This strategy is poised to get him exactly what he wants: the large, quick stimulus he’s been asking for and political dynamic he’s going to use to get things done over the next four years.

The fight to pass the stimulus bill has been the nation’s first look at how the newly minted administration will govern. Obama promised to change the tone in Washington and usher in a new era of bipartisanship. He also promised fundamental change in economic policy.

Can these two goals be reconciled? It would seem incongruous to include congressional Republicans in any effort to save our economy from the bottomless pit they threw us into. Can he have it both ways?

He is doing it as you read. Obama gave congressional Republicans ample opportunities to be involved in the bill. Then he gave them $300 billion in tax cuts.

This backed up his bipartisan rhetoric about seeing the bill approved by overwhelming majorities in the House and Senate. It gave the Republicans something they could vote for, and it gave Obama the credibility he needs in order to claim that his White House is changing the tone in Washington.

But not a single House Republican voted to pass the bill, and they were successful in defining the media narrative of the bill as a pork stuffed, socialist, Democrat goody bag.

Does this mean Obama’s charming bipartisan offensive was a failure?

No. The bill will inevitably pass and become law. The President gets what he wants while showing he genuinely wants to work together with Republicans. The fact that they don’t want to work with him is only good news.

While Obama appears reasonable, sincere and presidential, the Republicans appear petty and impotent. The election left them without leadership or direction. By choosing to define themselves as the party apposed to the hugely popular president’s hugely popular plan to save the country from the hugest crisis it’s faced in years will spell their doom.

Has an appealing, unified Republican message emerged from this debate? Has a leader? Was the nation moved by Jim DeMint’s manufactured outrage over anti-religion provisions in the bill? Or John Thune’s suggestion that we just divide up $900 billion in cash between all taxpayers? Does anyone even know what Mitch McConnell or John Boehner look like? Does anyone care?

No. By playing nice, the president has defanged the Republican leadership. By going over the heads of the Senate Republican leadership — who have now shown themselves to be totally infective as the opposition — and negotiating directly with moderate Republicans, Obama got the votes he needed to pass the bill.

This elevates moderates like Arlen Spector and Susan Collins — Senators from states in which Obama won big — to the level of power brokers and deal makers. The president has cut out the hard right leadership of the party and made a new and powerful coalition.

The stimulus bill will become law. The president looks good, the Republicans look dumb. That’s going to be the strategy from here on out. Moreover, this is where the promised change in tone will come from. By staying out of the partisan fray Obama will force Republicans to align themselves against good public policy instead of against the president himself.

Reach columnist Greg Ryan at opinion@dailyuw.com.

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