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The 'Americans Want Bipartisanship' Myth
In 2006, the Democrats ran on a platform of opposing -- not embracing -- the Republican agenda, and American voters handed them a resounding, even crushing, victory. In 2008, much the same thing happened: Democrats ran on platform of “change” from the Republican approach to governance -- not replicating it -- and resoundingly won again.
What possible reason is there, then, to argue that Democrats ought to adopt Republican ideas -- regardless of what those ideas are -- simply for the sake of “bipartisanship”? Americans elected Democrats to implement Democratic ideas and will hold Democrats responsible for the success or failure of their policies. Democrats should therefore use their majority power to carry out the polices that they think are the best ones for the country, not dilute those ideas and incorporate discredited Republican approaches in order to fulfill some vague bipartisan ideal.
Shortly thereafter, the NYT released a new poll (.pdf) which included findings showing what Americans think about "bipartisanship" -- and it is the exact opposite of what harmony fetishists continuously claim about Americans' supposed desire for "bipartisanship." Consider, first, this question:
Which do you think should be a higher priority right now for Barack Obama -- working in a bipartisan way with the Republicans in Congress or sticking to the policies he promised he would during the campaign?
Working bipartisan way -- 39%; Sticking to policies - 56%
By a 17 point-margin, Americans think it's more important that Obama "stick to his policies" than try to dilute them in order to attract Republican support in pursuit of "bipartisanship." It's not surprising that 39% want Obama to pursue bipartisanship. There are still many people who prefer Republican policies and naturally want Obama to embrace those policies in the name of "bipartisanship" -- but the group that wants that is in the clear minority. That's why Republicans lost so decisively in the last two elections. But even more revealing is this next question:
Which do you think should be a higher priority for Republicans in Congress right now -- working in a bipartisan way with Barack Obama or sticking to Republican policies?
Working bipartisan way - 79%; Sticking to policies: 17%
That's actually an amusing result: a huge majority of Americans want Congressional Republicans to be "bipartisan," but don't want Obama to be. Overwhelmingly, then, Americans favor "bipartisanship" only to the extent that it means that Republicans support Democratic policies and abandon their own.
Put another way, the reason that Americans voted overwhelmingly in favor of Democrats in the last two elections and overwhelmingly against Republicans is because they want Democratic policies and not Republicans policies. They drove Republicans out of office in massive numbers because they don't want Republicans and their policies governing the country. They want something different than Republican policies, meaningfully distinguishable from those policies -- "change." Everywhere but the Beltway, that proposition would be self-evident. [If the question about "bipartisanship" is asked generically without regard to political party -- as the new Washington Post poll phrased it -- only then will Americans will say they want bipartisanship over "political leaders sticking with their positions," because -- as all of this new polling data proves -- they want Republicans to compromise and support Obama's policies.]
The political establishment has never come to terms with, and the media establishment just refuses to acknowledge, how deeply unpopular and discredited the GOP is among most Americans in the wake of the eight-year Bush disaster. Political and media elites don't want to acknowledge that because they lent their continuous support for eight years to Republican power, yet -- even with Bush gone -- it's scarcely possible to imagine how a major political party could be held in lower esteem among voters. By huge margins (63-29%), Americans believe the GOP opposed Obama's stimulus package for political reasons, not because they genuinely believed it would be bad for the economy; they overwhelmingly disapprove of Congressional Republicans (38-56%) while approving of Obama (68-25%) and even Congressional Democrats (50-44%); trust Obama over Congressional Republicans to handle the economy (61-26%); and trust Democrats over Republicans "to do a better job in coping with the main problems the nation faces over the next few years" (56-30%). Those are enormous margins.
The punditry's claims that Americans want Democrats to dilute their policies in order to attract and include Republican support is entirely misleading. The endless media stories that Eric Cantor, Michael Steele and Rick Santelli are now riding some resurgent, anti-stimulus GOP wave are pure fiction. And the incessant calls for "bipartisanship" are anti-democratic in the extreme.
"Bipartisanship" has long been, and continues to be, a deceitful fig leaf to demand enactment of Republican policies even when Americans overwhelmingly oppose those policies. Just look at what two of the other participants in that NYT discussion yesterday mean when they call for "bipartisanship" from Obama: they mean that Obama should enact classic Republican policies. Hence, the Federalist Society's Steven Calebresi wants, in the name of "bipartisanship," Obama to enact school vouchers and other long-standing GOP education proposals and the various McCain proposals on health care. National Review's Ramesh Ponnuru thinks "bipartisanship" means Social Security reform that includes benefits cuts. And in the foreign policy and "terrorism" areas, "bipartisanship" almost invariably means keeping even the most radical Bush/Cheney policies in place with, at most, slight or even just symbolic modifications.
Of course, nobody embraces this bipartisanship myth more than Democrats do, even when (perhaps especially when) they're in the majority. When Republicans controlled the White House and Congress during most of the last eight years, demands for "bipartisanship" -- even from Democrats -- were virtually impossible to find. Instead, Democrats were more than happy to meekly assume the complicit posture for which they became known, using their minority status as an all-purpose excuse as to why they couldn't stop -- and usually supported -- even highly unpopular Bush policies (such as the Iraq War). Yet now that they're in the majority, "bipartisanship" suddenly becomes not only the supreme Beltway religion, but the battlecry of Democrats as well -- the phrase that justifies everything from embracing GOP positions to allowing flagrant Bush war crimes and other lawbreaking to go unpunished (as but one example: it's rather difficult to listen to Robert Gibbs and conclude anything other than that the administration is strongly considering the type of "Social Security reform" which people like Ponnuru have long advocated).
To the extent that elections permit messages to be sent on the part of the citizenry, the message from the last two elections could not be any more emphatic: Republicans and their policies are discredited, despised and unwanted. Polls before and after those elections unambiguously demonstrate the same sentiment. And that sentiment is completely rational -- after all, just look around at the decaying state of the country after eight years (really more) of extreme GOP political dominance. Yet our political and media class continue to ignore (as usual) the views of citizens and instead demand the opposite: that the few remaining differences between the parties be reduced still further, and that Republicans and their ideology continue to provide at least part of the basis for (and, in many cases, the bulk of) government policy (here's David Boren in today's Washington Post proposing all sorts of ways to vest GOP office holders with major influence over laws and policy).
As always, it's worth noting that the mere fact that large majorities of Americans believe X does not mean that X is true or right. But what is clear is that it's simply dishonest to claim that Americans want Republicans and their policies to shape how the country is governed. That's exactly what they don't want, even if it's done by manipulatively slapping the "bipartisan" justifying label on it.
UPDATE: The political "genius" who guided the GOP into full-scale political ruin -- Karl Rove -- said this in The Wall St. Journal two weeks ago:
Congressional Republicans lack President Barack Obama's bully pulpit and do not have the majorities that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid enjoy. But they are playing their hand extraordinarily well. . . .
House Republicans had the wisdom to continue to talk to the Obama White House. This made them look gracious, even as the president edged toward a "my way or the highway" attitude.
As always, Karl Rove lives in a universe that is pure fantasy. It was conclusively clear from the moment he wrote that, and is even clearer now, that his claims are pure fiction. Americans overwhelmingly believe that Obama is trying to work with Republicans (74-20%), but that Republicans are not trying to work with Obama (31-57%). It is Obama -- by a 43-point margin over the Congressional GOP -- who is perceived as trying to compromise and be bipartisan. Yet Rove blithely asserts the exact opposite of the truth: that it was Congressional Republicans who won politically because they were perceived as being so "gracious" and Obama looked dictatorial. Even as the GOP is as discredited as it can possibly be, Rove claims with a straight face that they "are playing their hand extraordinary well" and that "the president won this legislative battle, but at a high price -- fiscally and politically."
Rove's assertions, as usual, are the opposite of reality. Yet because media stars continue to view him as a man possessing unparalleled political wisdom, his propaganda becomes their reality: the dominant media storyline, therefore, is that people want Republicans included in governance and the GOP's stimulus opposition triggered a Republican resurgency among the citizenry. The disconnect between (a) popular sentiment and (b) the media's claims about popular sentiment, simply could not be more vast.
UPDATE II: Josh Marshall documents a perfect example of this rank media myth-making from the always illustratively inane Politico: according to that Drudgian gossip rag, we're a "nation of Santellis" -- just like, during the campaign, the Ordinary American was represented by the right-wing extremist, Rush-Limbaugh-following, McCain/Palin-loving Joe the Plumber. No matter how compelling the evidence is that the country has turned decisively against Republicans and Republicanism, the establishment media will just invent storylines out of whole cloth to claim that they are widely popular, even representative of most Americans, and their favorite instrument for demanding Republican rule even when Republicanism has been emphatically repudiated by the citizenry is "bipartisanship."
UPDATE III: As polls show Congressional Republicans held in as low esteem as can be imagined -- blamed for virtually everything and viewed as obstructionist -- Time Magazine publishes a new story glorifying GOP House Whip Eric Cantor, with this headline:
They have their mojo back and we're a nation of Santellis -- better give them what they want. Is it even theoretically possible to have a worse, more deceitful and more moronic press than the one we have?
- Posted in
41 Comments so far
Show AllThis seems a good foundation for an item declaring the Propaganda System's GOP credentials and displaying this trait as the #1 reason for the very consistent prevarication on its part--The reason Republicans lie all the time is because their lies are "backed-up" or even originate in corporate media, as the item about Blitzer and Hatch clearly shows.
Great article. I hope Obama reads it on his Blackberry.
Bipartisanship is just another word for Sellout.
Call it a sellout, capitulation, or whatever, the "bipartisan" euphemism is another example of the Democratic party abandoning its base and pleasing the corporate contributors at least as much as the Republicans do.
agreed ray -
when the democrats are in the minority they tell us they cannot help us until we help them get a majority - now they have the majority and bipartisanship is their cover
it has become painfully obvious that no one in our government seems all that concerned that corporate media has really done us in - in fact do we even really know anymore if our teevee news is coming from corporate america or the pentagon?
Vote Third Party people - we can still have republicans and democrats but we need our representatives to care more about we the people and less about their damn parties
"In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends." - Martin Luther King Jr
Gosh, I'm shocked, SHOCKED, I tell you.
(yawn)
LOL... How shocked are you))))))))))))))))))))
Taser malfunction? Cattle prod? Shock doctrine? Shock & awe? Future shock?
Why do Democrats cower before the Republicans? Let's stop wasting time trying to figure this out. The answer is simple: there one in the same.
From the article:
"...the media establishment just refuses to acknowledge, how deeply unpopular and discredited the GOP is..."
This is attributed to media complicity, which, though true, stops short of a convincing explanation. If we factor in class interest, however, much is revealed.
Media stars from Limbaugh, O'Reilly and Rove, to Couric, Brokaw and Blitzer, are multimillionaires who have nothing in common with us beyond an accident of geography. They're selling a product called "we're all in this together" even as they pack the silverware for a one-way trip to Montevideo.
"The 'Americans Want Bipartisanship' Myth"
Glen Greenwald uses the word myth as in "bipartisanship myth" but I prefer two words "Bull Sh#t." Bipartisanship, that great mantra of Republicans when not in a majority. (LOL) I don't think that I have ever detested a political party as much as I do the GOP.
I was born in Canada and you would never get elected by claiming to be bipartisan. Hell, we would expect you to be partisan when you have the majority and would expect the minority to be what they are...the opposition.
The media in the United States never ceases to amaze me. This so called news media(US) would actually be somewhat humorous if they were not so dangerous.
Where is that biased liberal American media I keep hearing about? I guess that is just a myth also...or better stated....Bull Sh#t
camus13
I have loved newspapers since a kid and worked for one for 35 years. But now I hardly ever read one and I can't say I'm sorry for the many are going the way of the dodo bird.
As for the beltway pundits they are beyound the pale...........stupid.....continiously talking lies lies lies.
Just one we do not have 7% unemployment unless you will to go along with Clinton's changing the method of calulations so he would look good.
The real figure is nearer 17 percent.
But all you hear is 7 percent forever.
Another one did you every see quote someone from a "think tank" that the Washington goofs tell you just what line the "tank" are selling. No way.
"What possible reason is there, then, to argue that Democrats ought to adopt Republican ideas -- regardless of what those ideas are -- simply for the sake of “bipartisanship”? "
Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery?
Greg,
My feelings exactly.
I'm an American. I want Bipartisanship. Is it really a myth?
Hi Joe,
I am sure the bipartisanship you so desire is not the Republican idea of what it is to be bipartisan in the United States. (If you do not pass their legislation you are partisan. If you pass their legislation you are still partisan but they will take the credit for the legislation.)(lol)
"I am sure the bipartisanship you so desire is not the Republican idea of what it is to be bipartisan in the United States"
Exactly right. The Republicans are the most partisan people on earth. There has to be give-and-take. I just want to see an end to the gridlock that has stymied change for all these years. Sure, we'll have to compromise as well. But it's the Republicans who need to come to the table, the Democrats are already there, ready to negotiate.
What "gridlock" that has stymied change??? For that matter, what change has been stymied?
You mean the all the bipartisan deregulation and free-market-neo-feudalist, reverse-Robin-Hood extremism under 20 years of bipartisan Bush-Clinton-Bush? You mean the bi-partisan war mongering, war crimes and torturing, criminality of the latter Bush?
No where else in the civilized world does this weird American notion of "bipartisanship" exist. In all other democracies, real democracies, when a party has a majority, or a majority coalition is formed, the country expects that party or coalition to lead and pursue it's full agenda 100 percent. Why have elections otherwise for Christs sake???
I know I've asked this before, but Mr. Hope, are you for real?
To prove you are not some kind of AI bot, can you tell is your occupation (Burston Martsteller maybe), how rich you are (I'm sure you are) - stuff like that?
---USAn---
"You mean the all the bipartisan deregulation and free-market-neo-feudalist, reverse-Robin-Hood extremism under 20 years of bipartisan Bush-Clinton-Bush? You mean the bi-partisan war mongering, war crimes and torturing, criminality of the latter Bush?"
No, that's not what I mean. Not that you care though, you just want to vomit up your constant flow of soundbytes.
"No where else in the civilized world does this weird American notion of "bipartisanship" exist. In all other democracies, real democracies, when a party has a majority, or a majority coalition is formed, the country expects that party or coalition to lead and pursue it's full agenda 100 percent. Why have elections otherwise for Christs sake???"
Calm down. You sound shrill even in print.
I believe this is exactly what people have been complaining about Bush doing for the past 8 years - shutting out all alternative voices and only pursuing his agenda. Bipartisanship is just a word to describe putting the best interests of the country before the party.
"To prove you are not some kind of AI bot, can you tell is your occupation (Burston Martsteller maybe), how rich you are (I'm sure you are) - stuff like that?"
You know, your question is incoherent and insulting. I've already mentioned where I work and my age before. I'd bother telling you (not that it would "prove" anything) but why should I? You behave like a mean spirited bully.
We cannot have bipartisanship until we have two distinct parties.
One of the other Joes
As someone to the left of Obama, I too want bipartisanship; but I don't want it at the expense of a progressive agenda. As Moodys and the CBO analysis showed the most bang for the buck from the stimulus comes from the extension of jobless benefits and food stamps the republicans are complaining about, not from making the Bush tax cut permanent. I've got to hope that there are a few republicans like Arlen Spector, or plan on retiring that will put aside partisan politics and do whats best for the country.
If there could be the republican equivalent of the 'blue dog democrats' they should be embraced. There used to be the so-called Rockfeller Republicans that while still republican embraced the middle, now even their great icon Reagan would be too liberal for the republican party - he raised some taxes.
There needs to be some pragmatism in the gop not strict party ideology.
The MSM needs to keep all politicians honest. They need to be like Catherine in 'Taming of the Shrew' pointing out when the emporer has no clothes.
They are called rhino repubes by rusty limbaughtomy... However they were last seen snorting rails of coke off of an adolecent prostitute's asscrack while on a sex tourism junket in the Dominican Republic...
The Democrats remind me of what Chomsky once said about opposing forces. He said it is not enough to simply withdraw your support from those you are in opposition to. You must also actively work to defeat the opposing force because if you do not you will have the same effect on the future as a person who commits suicide. How can that be you ask? A person who commits suicide automatically withdraws all support and can no longer actively work for the defeat of the opposition.
This is why Democrats fill the air with bluster yet there will be no attempt to decisively defeat the Conservatives by bringing them to trial.
The Democrats continuously commit political suicide in order to enable our opposition so that our voice does not become a force.
We need to reject the Dems and start an organization (not third party) and support those people from among us who promise to support our ideas only.
To hell with "bipartisanship". GIVE ME INDEPENDENTSHIP OR I'LL SHOOT !! Ok, I won't shoot but, eh, you get the idea. Sad that even Pat Buchanan is looking "liberal" in pale comparison these days.
Thanks, Glenn, for finishing off with some references to one of the most galling recent episodes of the mainstream media echo chamber effect - your reference to the myth, widely and uncritically circulated, that the country has suddenly become "a nation of Santellis", its seething masses aroused in anti-big government anger.
Until last week, few ordinary Americans had ever heard of this former derivatives trader turned financial analyst/talking head doing business reports for CNBC from the Chicago stock exchange. The guy went off on a frothy mouthed, anti-Obama rant in a single segment, and abruptly everywhere - and I mean everywhere - Santelli's stunt was reported as triggering a "populist" backlash against Obama's proposed residential mortgage foreclosure relief plan.
"Populism" became the adjective of the day, linked inseparably to news accounts, news analysis, and opinion pieces in the press and in the electronic media whenever there was reporting on the phenomenon of Santelli's rant. This juxtaposition came not just from the usual suspects at Faux News, from the Limbaughland of am talk radio, or in the Washington Times, the Wall Street Journal, WaPo, and/or the New York Times. "Populism" and discussion of Santelli's rant also made its way uncritically into op-ed pieces in Sunday's NY Times authored by Frank Rich and Maureen Dowd - alas, even into progressive investigative journalism circles courtesy of none other than Robert Parry.
Well here in the midwest, I assure you nobody in my neighborhood, place of employment, church, local coffee shop, tavern, or even at the country club is panting to pick up a torch or pitchfork and march on Washington over whether working class homeowners should get federal foreclosure help. This widely reported, highly touted "populist" backlash, supposedly rising like a great tsunami from the American grassroots to threaten Obama's housing plan, is all a fantasy.
Glenn Greenwald is right.
The Santelli phenomenon has a lot more in common with Joe the Plumber than it does with any genuinely populist rhetoric which (if left unchecked) might actually stir up the citizenry from their apathy and understandable despair.
Bill from Saginaw
Bill,
Great comment......As usual
What happened to the Unitary Executive?. Obama and the Democrats received an overwhelming mandate as FDR and the Democrats did in 1932. The myth that Americans want bipartisanship is to provide an excuse for the Democrats to not change anything.
Congress is irrelevant for the most part, but in reality it already works in a bipartisan way, agreeing on most issues related to finance (bail out), security (take way rights) and imperialism, and when they appear not to agree, the vote always goes the "right (wrong) way" anyways (grin). In order to give us the illusion of a democracy, MSM presents us with the illusion of great battles being fought between the parties when in fact both parties work for the same boss (and that isn't Joe the Plumber).
If Americans ever woke up to see what is really happening, and removed all the myths, I am not sure they could take it. It's an Orwellian world today where the truth is the lie and vice versa.
"Obama and the Democrats received an overwhelming mandate as FDR and the Democrats did in 1932."
In 1932, FDR garnered 472 electoral votes to Hoover's 59. In 2008, Obama garnered 365 to McCain's 173. In 1936, FDR won by the biggest landslide ever (discounting Washington's unanimous victories as he ran uncontested): 523 to Landon's 8.
Ok, so whats the point, that FDR got more votes, or are you saying Obama and the Democrats did not have an overwhelming mandate despite Obamas 2-1 margin of victory. In 1933, the Senate was 59-36 Dems (picked up 11 seats), today its 57-41 with 1 vacant seat and Lieberman (picked up 8 seats).
Sioux Rose
MIMICCS: Excellent post. I particularly agree with your first paragraph. By using the whole charming "bipartisanship" diplomacy excuse, nothing needs to change, and Obama CAN LOOK LIKE he's trying to "work" with the other team. Then when nothing advances, it will be written off as the price of seeking a unity for the nation, etc.
I had a "bi partisan" breakfast drink this morning. I took a half glass of orange juice and mixed it with a half glass of vegetable juice. Oh boy, yummy, just like bi-partisan politics.
Reminds me of the bipartisan lunch I had...
An irradiated GMO madcow Burger, a glass of RBGH milk
and a slice of hope/change pie...
USans don't want "bipartisanship". Usans want to tip over the duopoly, along with the entire elite establishment, and watch it crash down into a pile of rubble. It's destruction of world societies, especially our own, and the entire biosphere, is at the point now where it can neither be ignored nor allowed to continue.
Like it or not, we're either stuck with one party or the other or maybe a mixture of the two. Getting a 3rd party to be relevant even if that party should win anything is what you all are after.
I get Greenwald's point, but Obama is the one who has raised the whole bullshit issue of bipartisanship. I haven't heard any Republicans bandying it about. Naturally they're against it, but he's all for it, even if Americans oppose it because they know, sort of, what Repugs are, sort of, really about.
As GG says, "'Bipartisanship' has long been, and continues to be, a deceitful fig leaf to demand enactment of Republican policies even when Americans overwhelmingly oppose those policies." But it was OBAMA from the very beginning who raised this false god to the level it now perches upon. Repugs are merely co-opting his inane political faux pas and using it against him. What a surprise! If the "bipartisan" smokescreen is to teach us anything, it's that the Democrats, led by Obama, have used it as a wedge to water down every last pseudo-progressive initiative they ever devise, so it comports well with the wishes and demands of Bobby Jindal, Tim Pawlenty, Mitch McConnell, Eric Cantor and John Boehner. Obama wants those guys to like him, so he bends over backwards to please them every time. If those consummate assholes "have their mojo back", Obama handed it to them on a gilded platter.
"Bipartisanship" is the perfect excuse for Obama to implement right-wing policies, which is his and his party's first goal: corporatist supremacy once and for all.
This "gridlock", this "bickering" between parties is nothing more than cheap theater designed to fool the fools. There's no bickering, it's all theater. There aren't two parties, just one big enterprise. At the end, the Republican policy always wins, regardless of how many Democrats control Washington right now.
I agree that bipartisanship is BS, but did you ever stop to think that Obama is rope-a-doping Republicans with it? Maybe its like an akido thing, where you use the force of an attack (the BS call for bipartisanship) against the opposition. If Obama keeps symbolically meeting them halfway, he in effect blunts their attack, and co opts their message. Sean Hannity has to suck it up, and meantime, Obama uses his true power to do whatever the hell he or Nancy Pelosi wants.
I wish that the left would stop complaining about every last tiny thing. Obama's bipartisan spiel is based on the ideology that as a whole we can overcome and accomplish a lot more than split. It is not about Obama "giving in" to Republicans, its about working as Americans to overcome the challenges we face today.
Plus Or Minus Bitartisanship Americans Want Change
"Based on?"
"Yes we can."
At this point in history, bipartisanship is treason.
Obama needs to get over his "messiah" delusion and start working for the people who put him into office--because we can kick him out just as easily. If he needs to "be loved" by his enemies, then he should get into a different line of work. The people have been trashed long enough by corrupt politicians--what we need is a fighter--a partisan fighter.
Donna,
I agree that what is needed is a partisan fighter (One who fights for the people) but I really don't see any "messiah" complex/delusions demonstrated by this President. Perhaps these "delusions" come from a few of his supporters but certainly not from the man himself.
"If he needs to "be loved" by his enemies, then he should get into a different line of work."
I don't think he is looking for love in all the wrong places.(lol) But...he does appear to be consulting on both sides of the isle. The man is a brilliant politician (Which is not necessarily a bad talent when one considers he is a politician) and I am sure he is aware of exactly who his sworn opponents are. In other words, I doubt he is an individual who is into abusive relationships. But abuse is part of the job....he knows that......................