Editorial: For leaders who are listening, two examples of what not to do

If there were a theme to the popular rhetoric regarding politics over the past few years, and certainly during the most-recent election campaign, it would likely be summed up in two words.

Work.

Together.

Judging from all the claims and pledges of bipartisanship during the campaign, you might think that our politicians have been listening. Then, you see their actions and two very different words come to mind.

Tone.

Deaf.

President Barack Obama created a national stir last week as he began to hint that he may act through executive order to initiate immigration reforms. The president's shrill and constant critics seized on his statements to reinforce their complaints of what they see as overuse of executive orders - despite statistics that show Obama has relied on them less often than many of his predecessors - but the real cause for alarm here is not the potential use of a fairly common presidential strategy but the potential lost opportunity to work together with Congress on an issue where many political leaders in both parties see vast stretches of common ground.

Special interest pressures on the president for immediate immigration reform are substantial, we know. And we have favored many of the themes of recent efforts to enact immigration reform. But for the president to act unilaterally now, in the aftermath of an election in which his party took a well-documented drubbing and prior to laying the groundwork for bipartisan solutions with the new Congress, would be a provocative insult sure to set back, rather than promote, the public's hopes for a cooperative national leadership.

Not that the president or his Democratic Party stand alone in the arena of political gamesmanship. In an interview with National Public Radio's Melissa Block the day after Republicans regained control of the Senate at the ballot box, the body's No. 3-ranking leader, Sen. John Thune of South Dakota, matter-of-factly laid out a strategy of naked partisanship in the direction in which he foresees Republicans pushing moves to modify the Affordable Care Act. Acknowledging that any attempt to repeal the act is sure to be met with a veto that can't be overridden, Thune said he expects Republicans to push a repeal anyway, force the veto and then "piece by piece ... try and find areas where we might get some Democrats to vote with us."

The fact is, of course, that some Democrats are waiting and willing to talk about changing aspects of the ACA, such as the medical device excise tax, for one. But under what definition of good government does it encourage the president to, in Thune's phrase, "at least meet us halfway" by spending weeks or months on a debate that everyone knows from the outset is antagonistic and pointless?

We can't speak to every lawmaker in Washington, but every successful congressman we interviewed during the 2014 campaign made a point of emphasizing his or her commitment to cooperative, bipartisan leadership. And we have two U.S. senators, Democrat Dick Durbin and Republican Mark Kirk, who emphasize their devotion to moderate, productive government.

To all of them, as well as to state lawmakers who may be reflecting on the difference between governing and manipulating government, we say this: Listen and act on the themes the nation is crying out for. Here are two examples of what not to do. We eagerly await the influence you exert to reject these kinds of political misbehavior and move our government in a more productive direction.