In praise of bipartisanship

[babylonsister]

In praise of bipartisanship
Michael Tomasky



Okay, I'm ready now. I'm going to defend something that it's quite unfashionable for liberals to defend, and I'm ready to take my medicine. But please hear me out.

I believe that Barack Obama is right to talk about bipartisanship, and I do not think that he should drop it because of the congressional voting pattern on one piece of legislation. I think his critics – and on the broadly construed left, among bloggers and pundits and whatnot, they are legion to the point of near unanimity, with only two exceptions I can think of – are missing an important point.

The standard criticism of Obama's bipartisan outreach goes like this. He met with Republicans on Capitol Hill. They stiffed him. They showed that they're impossibly troglodytic. Why should he waste any more time on these people? Just crush them.

But here's the thing. This criticism, and this entire debate about the efficacy of his bipartisan overtures, presumes that Obama's audience for his bipartisan talk is the Republicans in Congress and the conservatives in Washington.

But that is not his intended audience. His audience is the country.

True, he went to see congressional Republicans in an attempt to fire up the peace pipe. Well, as Barry Goldwater famously said, you have to go to hunting where the ducks are. But I think that even those meetings were conducted only partially for the benefit of those Republicans. They were conducted for citizens, so they could see that he was trying something different.

more...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/michaeltomasky/2009/feb/18/obama-administration-virtues-of-bipartisanship

[meeloo]

1. Bipartisanship is the achilles heel of the liberal mindset

[babylonsister]

2. Why? nt

[bemildred]

3. Indeed. Politics is show business, and you want to play the good guy.

"If you have to kill a man, it costs nothing to be polite." -- W. S. Churchill

[acmavm]

4. This is funny.