Evil Partisanship

Perhaps the underlying principle of the Obama campaign is its belief that politics can be transcended, that our problems as a nation can be solved only if overheated partisanship people associate with Washington is overcome. When he formed his Presidential Exploratory Committee on January 16, 2007, the Illinois senator exclaimed:

But challenging as they are, it's not the magnitude of our problems that concerns me the most. It's the smallness of our politics. America's faced big problems before. But today, our leaders in Washington seem incapable of working together in a practical, common sense way.

Sometimes, though, this idealized version of possibilities buts up against reality. Campaigning in Pennsylvania for Obama, Pennsylvania senator Bob Casey, a determined foe of abortion rights, conceded of the front-runner "He has the unique skills to try to lower the temperature and foster a sense of common ground, and try to figure out ways that people can agree (but) on this issue, it's particularly hard."

Bipartisansip, post-partisanship, non-partisanship is fine- until it affects issues you care about. And writing on slate.com on 1/8/08, Jack Shafer noted another peril of bipartisanship:

Moving to the contemporary period, we discover that monument to bipartisan accord: the Patriot Act, which passed the Senate 98-1 and the House 357-66. So unified in pursuing the common interest were legislators that they barely debated the bill, and few read it. The No Child Left Behind Act passed with near unanimity, even though nobody much cares for it today.

He concluded "if you embrace compromise for the sake of compromise and ban division for the sake of political unity, you're left with parties and candidates that don't stand for anything."

Maybe Bob Casey has stumbled onto something he didn't expect.