Bipartisanship Flies Under the Radar in D.C.

There’s very little incentive to brag about working with the other side.

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During the 2020 campaign, Joe Biden was outspoken in his desire to “revive the spirit of bipartisanship in this country.”

On May 15, Politico reported that, at the urging of many advisers, Biden had mostly given up on working with the GOP, which he purportedly now “views as an existential threat to the nation’s democracy.”

Four days later, Biden enjoyed the biggest bipartisan victory of his presidency. Talk about timing.

The historic $40 billion aid package for Ukraine was, as Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell predicted, “a big bipartisan landslide.” Just shy of 80 percent of Republican senators voted for it.

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  1. Avatar photo
    Ben Connelly

    I can remember being in high school and “bipartisanship” was still all the rage. It was often a myth. But people talked about it like they wanted more of it and as though it were a good thing.

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  2. alevi

    I hear a lot of criticism about the people (GOP, Dems, individual legislators, etc), primary structure, cable news driving partisanship. What about the failure of institutions? See e.g. McGinnis & Rappaport, Restoring the Constitution of Compromise, National Affairs, No. 51, Spring 2022 (shorter version of their longer law review article). They make some compelling points, too.

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  3. Ohio Reader

    Certainly flying under the radar is the SECURE 2.0 act, which will help Americans save for retirement. It passed the House overwhelmingly on March 29 and was introduced in the Senate on May 20. It is widely expected to become law in 2022.

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    Dexember

    Wholly Misinterpreted Batman!

    Jonah wrote an article with a premise: bipartisan legislation is only effective when no one really talks about it because of both party’s negative polarization dynamics.

    And then sooo many comments are about Jonah not attacking one partisan group or another. That wasn’t the damn article! Go write your own article about how awful group “x” is and how they are waaaay more at fault for all our ills than group “y”.

    And stop complaining that “Jonathan” is being partisan by writing a piece about bipartisanship where he, *gasp*, writes about both partisan sides!

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  6. Jim S

    It is this type of talk about bipartisanship that led me to finally support abolishing the filibuster. And ironically it was Kyrsten Sinema who convinced me it needs to go after many many years of supporting her position for keeping It.

    Sinema is a master of the bipartisanship grift. Call a press conference, moan about how you must have bipartisanship to support anything, tell us all about how u can’t do your job without it.
    Of course this would be great if she actually had 3 or 5 or 10 GOP Senators behind her and a plan to move forward, I would be all eyes and ears and standing on my chair!

    But that is not what happens. She has of course not generated ANY BIPARTISAN SUPPORT AT ALL. So she gets to give us all a nice lecture on TV and get some nice footage for her ads and then she’s outta there. Sorry my hands are tied! I might as well go to my corporate fundraiser. C’ya suckers!

    And IMHO that is when the American people lose big time. Because the filibuster not only blocks some progressive legislative agenda, it blocks DEBATE on any issue that Senators find it inconvenient to talk about. And you know I think Americans actually are not out of line to expect Senators to debate and amend and produce legislation because you know, IT’S THEIR JOB.

    So yes get rid of the filibuster. Make EVERY bill a bipartisan bill. At least insofar as requiring it at least be debated and voted on.



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    Rajeev

    I think this oversimplifies it. Democrats have been fairly consistent on the overall foreign policy the last couple of decades. The idea is gather allies from Europe and other helpful places and then build coalitions to deal with these world problems. Avoid American troop engagement whenever possible. Republicans have vehemently opposed these alliances and have considered any of this talk to be "leading from behind", regardless of being noninterventionalist or hawkish. The Rand Paul wing of the Republican party hates ceding any power to NATO whereas the John Bolton wing wants the US to always act unilaterally first and then have other nations fall in line.

    Joe Biden did a lot (along with Boris Johnson) to bring hesitant countries like Germany to do a 180 and support Ukraine. NATO has had its strongest moments propping up Ukraine these past few months and Joe Biden deserves some credit for helping the focus to remain on Ukraine and NATO not allowing the simplistic narrative that the US is intervening.

    With a situation like Crimea (or Georgia before it), there was no appetite for a major support to a conflict over a small territory that was most sympathetic to Russia as compared to the rest of Ukraine. I doubt you will see a Democrat president engage in military conflict or negotiations (Iran Nuclear Deal, STARK, etc.) if they are not alongside major European allies and other regional allies.

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        Rajeev

        But his father's Libertarian wing back in the late 00s was legitimately anti-involvement across the board. There was a coherent constitutional philosophy from that wing that Rand Paul mostly still advocates for (if imperfectly), including Congress needing to declare war, not getting involved in foreign conflicts that don't directly threaten the US, and avoiding supporting covertly foreign governments or oppositions.

        Parallel to that was a hawkish side of the Republican Party that built international coalitions but really didn't care if they formed or not. Republicans pointed to the number of countries they got to support them on Iraq but many of those countries did so because it's an easy choice between US & Iraq regardless of whether they agree with the war. And the Bush years showed us they would go at it alone if they needed to. Biden, Obama, and Clinton have shown much more reservation wanting to get an alliance first and in some cases (Libya during Obama's term) let another country (France) take the lead.

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          PaulH

          @Rajeev: Yep, Republicans are not as fixated on Putin as some think.

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      Don S.

      "Republicans have vehemently opposed these alliances and have considered any of this talk to be "leading from behind", regardless of being noninterventionalist or hawkish." This is too much of a generalization/oversimplification. The Rand Paul wing and the John Bolton wing are just 2 wings of the Republican party foreign policy outlook. There are significant numbers of Republicans that support other views. Limiting it to the last couple of decades (2 Republican administrations and 2 Democratic administrations), we are still part of the biggest alliance in the world - NATO. And in 2001 article 5 of that alliance was implemented against the Taliban and Al Qaeda during a Republican administration. Not questioning your other points.

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        Rajeev

        While I agree you can't summarize the views of each prominent elected or appointed Republican in 2 categories, I don't believe any Republicans supported Obama when he emphasized diplomacy and world coalitions. My main point was the coalition building during the 2 Bush administrations was tangible but secondary to the overall mission. None of these conflicts would've been stopped if international support was low. Both President Bushes to (depending on your perspective) their credit or detriment were willing to go at it on their own. I didn't see that from any of the last three Republican presidents. Trump was the only President in a long time that had a general disdain for NATO and other coalitions.

        "Leading from behind" became a rallying cry between 2008 and 2012 that was embraced by every Republican Presidential candidate save Ron Paul & Gary Johnson in 2012. The Democratic Party never liked strong interventionalist policy and even opposed some of Obama's actions pertaining to Syria.

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  8. Avatar photo
    The Bell Tower

    “…the GOP, which he purportedly now ‘views as an existential threat to the nation’s democracy.’l

    If you want to call Trump an existential threat to democracy, sign me up. When you smear the entire opposition party with that criticism from Washington’s chair, don’t ask me why I refuse to support Democrats or the president.

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        The Bell Tower

        Sorry, we’ve argued about this before and I disagree. You can’t tell me to abandon my party because it includes an asshole former president. That just makes a bunch of us politically homeless and I reject that entirely. I can be a Republican and criticize other Republicans.

        I’d be happy to vote Democrat but as long as the elected leader of that party paints everyone not in his own party as an existential threat to democracy, he can eff right off.

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            The Bell Tower

            Yes, I can absolutely vote for and support Republicans while not supporting Trump. This is a false choice. And if Democrats want Republicans to lose elections, they can stop painting everybody who isn’t in their party as an existential threat to the country.

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    George.Skinner

    The key element in this is that *the base* values tribal partisanship over actually accomplishing something. As Winston Churchill said, "A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject." The base is composed of political fanatics, and their persistence has been steering the parties and political system to ruin at the expense of 90% of people who just want to get things done and have better things to do with their lives than immerse themselves in petty political debates.

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    Bill B

    There are bi-partisan leaders in Congress - they will all be primaried.

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