>From the Democratic Leadership Council. These guys are great. First
they say that Nader's not to blame, and now that it doesn't really matter
whether Bush or Gore wins.
Seth
[Image]New Dem Daily | DLC | November 15, 2000 [Image]
What Kind of Bipartisanship?
As the Florida saga continues apace, it's becoming more and
more obvious that whoever wins the presidency will have to
govern in an environment of close partisan divisions in
Congress and in the country, and with an opposition angrily
aroused by the nature of its defeat.
But the virtual tie in the presidential election, and the
agonizing process of breaking it, are only part of the
problem. By any measure, from Congress to state legislatures
to partisan identification in the electorate as a whole, the
two parties are at a level of near-absolute parity, with
about 30 percent of Americans unattached to either of them.
Unless the two parties are content to pursue the potentially
disastrous route of refusing to cooperate and instead
beginning the 2002 and 2004 elections right now, they must
somehow find a way to rise to a level of bipartisan discourse
unseen in Washington since at least 1997.
Once a president has been chosen, the winner and his
Congressional allies must take truly extraordinary measures
to make it clear they intend to work closely with the other
party to govern.
A token Cabinet appointment of a member of the other party
will not suffice. Nor will the bogus bipartisanship of
attracting token support from the other party for a partisan
agenda.
If Al Gore becomes president, he could limit bipartisanship
to elements of his own campaign platform that have some
significant Republican support, such as the McCain-Feingold
campaign finance reform bill or the Dingell-Norwood version
of the Patients' Bill of Rights. That may get a couple of
important bills passed, but it won't seriously reduce
Republican antagonism to his Administration or help him on
anything else. A President Gore would need to return to the
genuinely bipartisan, center-out approach that led to
enactment of welfare reform and telecommunications reform in
1996, the Balanced Budget Agreement of 1997, and every major
trade agreement of the Clinton-Gore Administration.
And if George W. Bush becomes president, he could limit his
efforts to be "a uniter" to the Denny Hastert form of
bipartisanship: draft a GOP bill, enforce party unity, and
then try to pick off a few Blue Dogs to get to 218 votes.
That, too, might get a few bills onto the president's desk,
but it would strongly encourage Congressional Democrats to go
into a posture of total opposition. At a bare minimum, a
President Bush would need to explicitly repudiate the
conservative "revolutionaries" in his party, put a stop to
House Minority Whip Tom DeLay's "K Street Strategy" of
intimidating business lobbyists into partisanship, and
seriously reach out to mainstream Democratic opinion.
If the new president, whoever he is, genuinely seeks a real
bipartisan agenda, the raw material will be there in public
opinion, and even in Congress. There will be more than 70
members of the House New Democrat Coalition in the next
Congress, along with upwards of 20 New Democrat Senators. On
the other side of the aisle, the small but hearty band of
moderate Republicans in both Houses could be augmented by the
GOP's McCainiacs, who are conspicuously following their
leader in demanding a new, bipartisan way of doing business
in the current environment.
With the American people all but exhausted by the last
campaign, it's no time to start the next one. Once all the
shouting has died down in Florida, it will be time to talk,
and to govern.