If Biden Wants Unity, He Should Emulate Bush Instead of Obama

When you push major legislation on a party-line basis, the opposing party has no incentive to provide cover for it.

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As an American, I wish President Joe Biden every success in defeating the pandemic and getting the economy moving again. But when it comes to the dysfunction of our political system and the polarized climate generally, it’s becoming clear he’s part of the problem, not the solution. 

I don’t think this is deliberate. No doubt Biden believes he’s doing right as he sees it. He’s also probably sincere about his desire to detoxify our politics by pushing for some gauzy notion of “unity.”

The real problem isn’t the player, it’s the game. Over the last half-century, the parties (and their voters) have separated from each other like oil and water in a centrifuge. 

As Amy Walter of the Cook Political Report notes, Americans “don’t even agree on the same set of problems.” She points to data from the Pew Research Center that illuminates the divide.

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  1. Barrett W Horne

    I cannot comment on the weeds of the machinations between Obama and the GOP in the early days of the Obama administration crafting the stimulus package. But Jonah's point: "Obama thought he already made concessions to the GOP on the substance. What he didn’t appreciate is that to get participation from the opposition, the opposition needs to be included in the process, not handed an ultimatum."

    A significant aspect of my consultant work is helping organizations figure out how to craft and then implement change. To the extent that all the principal stakeholders have not had a genuine voice in the process of crafting and shaping organizational change, there will be resistance--potentially fatal. And it is irrelevant how brilliant or beneficial is the change to the stakeholders. Many organizational change efforts think about collaboration and stakeholder involvement far too late in the process, reducing the effort to trying to get 'buy in'. It is usually way too late by then. I see this happen all the time with organizations.

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    Seastack

    The stimulus didn’t lead to the GOP’s obstructionist stance, Obama’s election led to the GOP’s obstructionist stance. Remember Mitch the day after saying the primary goal was to make Obama a one-term president? I agree with the thesis Jonah pitched but c’mon..the argument is weak sauce.

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    Paul Reichardt

    Perhaps a president known for saying “you are ether with us or you are with the terrorists” should not be held as a model “uniter-not-divider”?
    Yes, in context it was 10 days after 9/11 and directed towards an international audience whereas Mr. Goldberg’s discussion is limited to domestic policy, blah, blah…
    But Bush’s sentiment and later remarks reflected and inspired a similar Manichean take on American critics of his GWOT policies among other officials and supporters, who usually countered by challenging the loyalties, intentions, and patriotism of those critics rather than the address the arguments—for example those who questioned the wisdom of a full-scale invasion of Afghanistan without any semblance of an exit strategy, not to mention Iraq.
    Then there was Dick Cheney’s quip about unbalanced tax cuts that carried the day over the priests of Bush’s first Treasury Secretary, “We won the midterms. This is our due.” These shouldn’t go down the memory-hole when having these kinds of discussions about partisanship.

    One can quibble over whether these are analogous circumstances, but I think both Bush and Obama sincerely went into office branding themselves as guys willing to work with the other side, but found the nature of their opposition as well as external circumstances and world events that unfolded once then office pushed them to govern quite differently.

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      Paul Reichardt

      #EditButton: should say "protests" not "priests"

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      1. Barrett W Horne

        You make helpful points. And I do give the benefit of the doubt to Obama and Bush as sincerely wanting to work constructively with the other side. My hunch is that neither one of them (and political operatives generally) are very skilled at pulling it off. There are understandable systemic reasons for this (after all, winning elections is a zero-sum game), but I think there are other reasons that contribute--not really appreciating or understanding how genuine co-creation and collaboration works when there are deep divides and differences. Rather than co-creation, the conversations are about 'selling' competing products. More than good will is needed. And the co-creation conversations need to start much earlier in the legislative processes.

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  4. Diane Hansen

    Jonah, you've got more faith in Joe Biden's intentions that I have. The thing is, I don't think he thinks or has a vision. So far it looks to me that Biden is on autopilot...his failure of history and lack of vision is in the process of recreating the Obama years, and the Obama years is exactly how we got Donald Trump. Obama's way left of center agenda, boxed out Republicans on just about every decision or policy he made. The majority of American voters hover somewhere around the center....the extremes on both sides of aisle have been calling the shots for about 12 yrs, and it's been nothing but unsettling, chaotic, and sometimes violent. I don't see it changing if Biden continues down this path. Joe might want to remember that Congress makes the laws, not presidents with a pen and a phone. Maybe some stimulus is necessary, but opening up the economy, and telling the teacher's union to rotate on it and get back to work would go a long way to improving the economy, and option doesn't create trillions of debt. I don't understand why Biden would want to take five steps backwards, and become energy dependent by cancelling the the Keystone Pipeline...not to mention the thousands of people who will be unemployed with no prospects. Instead of addressing the cause of escalating costs of higher education, Biden wants to just cancel the loan debt. THE GOV DOESN'T HAVE A JOB.....I have already paid off my educations debt, I don't think it's fair, nor do I want to pay off the debt of others. Not only are progressives making weenies of our children, but we are not teaching them that decisions have consequences. With all the troubles in this country, why would Joe Biden cancel the border wall and allow people into this country who have no job skills or means to support themselves? Dems are so focused on retribution that they are forgetting that not only did 75 million people did not vote for Biden, but that many of those who did, weren't pro Biden, only anti-Trump. I am beginning to not recognize my country anymore, and that's not a good thing.

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    Carolyn

    I took Biden's unity pledge to mean that he wants to unite the country and that he wants input from Republicans on legislation. They wanted to go much, much smaller on the COVID/stimulus package. Even within the ranks of left leaning economists there are disagreements on how bold it should be. Larry Summers says go smaller; Austan Goolsbee says go big. I see now that Biden is walking away from the $15 minimum wage demand from the progressives and is willing to lower the income level of those receiving stimulus. I haven't agreed with everything Biden has done so far, but I still see him as tracking more to the middle vs the extreme left side of the party. This week I listened to a good podcast conversation (Signposts) between Rev. Russell Moore and John Dickerson. An interesting view expressed by Dickerson: he believes that out of our past presidents, Biden will end up being most like GHWB. I'm going to be watching to see how that pans out.

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  6. Andrew Ratts

    Biden won’t. His bipartisanship is all talk. I recall watching him chair the Bork and Thomas SCOTUS hearings, an empty suit who bent with prevailing political wind. He talked big about giving Bork a fair hearing, and then passively watched the smear. On Thomas, he would have gone with voting him down, had Thomas not come back with a strong defense that the country rallied behind. The demagoguery of accusing Paul Ryan of wanting to keep black people “in chains” in the 2012 debate. There is no principle there, hiding behind the “hale fellow, well met” personality.

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    Victor Clairmont

    This is a great point Jonah.

    People in politics, even at the state level, need to understand that if you sweep into power with a majority, unless you treat the minority decently and include them in your governance, you set your party and team up for failure down the road. It clearly has been shown in the past that just brute forcing your approach tends to radicalize your opposition against you. And since no one party is in power forever, leads to the polarization of the ground troops that goes out to vote and the sowing of seeds of division.

    If we continue to have 100% different priorities, and have no overlap between both parties, it will continue to lead to a recipe for disaster.

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      Narwhal

      “The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism. The disorders and miseries which result gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual; and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of public liberty.”
      https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/washing.asp

      I agree with the broad point Jonah makes, but I’m not sure I entirely agree on the specifics given in this article.

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  8. Art

    Times have changed and so have politics. Just as in 2009, Republicans want Biden to fail especially economically...Republicans are stuck on refusing aid to States even though Republican governors have asked for it..The problem today is that Republican members of Congress are afraid of both Trump and Rupert Murdoch.

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  9. MikeS

    I think the idea of pursuing "unity" in our current politics is futile, if by that one means that the other party will provide political cover. It won't happen. Biden could cut the price tag for his bill in half, and there will be no political cover from the GOP.

    Jonah's invocation of GWB's working across the aisle on "No Child Left Behind" doesn't quite work as a model either, given the emergency nature of the current relief package. Moreover, despite the fact that COVID should be a politically unifying tragedy, as 9/11 was for Bush, the politicization of the pandemic response only adds to the separation between the parties.

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    Will Bates

    I do not like the bill being passed. It is stupid on many levels.

    But all the right-leaning pundits keep saying Democrats should water down bills and appease Republicans for the sake of “bipartisanship” and “unity”, and I have to ask...why?!

    If someone wants to argue the bill shouldn’t be passed because of its substance, I am all ears.

    But I don’t think Democrats owe Republicans anything. They can’t fight with knives every time, when the pirates team brings cannons. Meanwhile the pirates shouting “lay down your knives, it’ll be fine!”

    Write this article in 1992, cool. But Mitch McConnell deserves no grace.

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