Reaching across aisle far from futile
As far as most of Washington is concerned, Barack Obama's big talk about bipartisanship is kaput. One month into his presidency, many pundits and political analysts have told him to drop it. Get real, they say. It bought you next to nothing on the stimulus bill. Forget the compromising. Look for support where you may actually find it, from Democrats.
My Washington Post colleague Richard Cohen recently urged Obama to muzzle "all the gauzy talk about (banishing) partisanship ... " Brown University political scientist James Morone said in The New York Times that American history shows bipartisanship to be a myth. Some consider Obama's wooing of Republicans a rookie mistake, a measure of naiveté. Others focus on Republicans and fault them for denying Obama all but three votes on the stimulus bill. The critics agree the bipartisanship effort should end. I hope Obama isn't listening. It's the worst advice he has received.
It starts from a false premise: that the stimulus bill proves the failure of outreach to Republicans. In fact, had Obama not negotiated successfully with Republican Sens. Susan Collins, Olympia Snowe and Arlen Specter and met most of their terms, his bill would have died. This was a success for bipartisanship, not a failure. Morone's history also is false. To prove that bipartisanship has never existed, he has to skip over Harry Truman's success with a Republican Congress on the Marshall Plan, Lyndon Johnson's forging the great civil rights acts with Everett Dirksen and Bill McCulloch, and Ronald Reagan's steering his first budget and tax bill through a Democratic House.
But the real reason Obama should ignore this advice is that he will need Republican votes to pass other parts of his program. When it comes to energy, regional and commodity interests will inevitably divide the Democrats. They always do. Oil, coal, natural gas and consumer groups will exert their will. If Obama writes off the Republicans in advance, he will end up with a watered-down bill - or nothing.
This is even more true when it comes to health care. We saw what happened when the Clintons rebuffed potential Republican allies and could not even bring a bill to the floor. It will be exquisitely difficult to negotiate changes in a system of vital importance to every family, considering that hospitals, doctors and other providers and insurers have huge economic stakes. One of the few breaks Obama can count on is that Sens. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and Bob Bennett, R-Utah, have a number of Democrats and Republicans as co-sponsors of an innovative bill. It would be foolish to ignore them. The same applies to immigration reform. Does anyone really think Obama would be well-advised to put that issue before Congress without having a long, serious conversation with his 2008 opponent, John McCain? Even if they reached complete agreement, passage would be a heavy lift. But at least it would have a chance. And think ahead to entitlement reform. Democrats will never tackle Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid - and the taxes to finance them - unless, as former Wyoming Sen. Al Simpson used to say, significant numbers of Republicans agree to "link arms and go over the cliff together."
How about issues such as trade, where Obama may be looking to Republicans to offset the protectionist impulses among his fellow Democrats. Nor will Obama have an easier time coping with the manifold challenges of the world - Iraq, Iran, Korea, Afghanistan, Pakistan and the rest - without bipartisan support. On the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, he had a close-up view of the productive partnership between Democrat Joe Biden and Republican Dick Lugar. They can help Obama immeasurably.
To throw all this away out of frustration with what happened on the stimulus bill would be insane. If the political wise guys can't see that, let's hope the president can.
© 2009, Washington Post Writers Group