It has been a tumultuous November for the American political system. The Republican party swept to victory in the midterm elections, ousting the Democrats from control of the Senate in a result widely interpreted as voter repudiation of President Obama.
It has been a tumultuous November for the American political system. The Republican party swept to victory in the midterm elections, ousting the Democrats from control of the Senate in a result widely interpreted as voter repudiation of President Obama.
Undaunted, the president countered with bold executive action on immigration that the GOP denounced as a provocation of further partisan conflict. So we would not blame anyone for questioning the timing of this editorial series on areas of potential bipartisan agreement, “Beyond Gridlock,” the first installment of which appeared Nov. 2.
Our answer would be: The latest partisan flare-up only accentuates the necessity of a focus on objectives that might actually be achievable. Our series has dealt not with lofty hypotheses about what the two parties might be able to do if only they could break through to higher ground.
Rather, we emphasized the underappreciated fact that Republicans and Democrats have already agreed on many elements of reform legislation in non-glamorous but crucial areas: housing finance, trade policy, corporate taxation, postal service, cybersecurity, transportation infrastructure and energy efficiency.
In each case, we argued that it was plausible to think that the next Congress could finish the job that the current one had started. And despite recent events, it might still be, assuming that Republicans can resist the temptation to follow through on their threats to treat Obama’s immigration action as an excuse not to act on anything else — and assuming that Obama is prepared to deal with them if they do.
What’s also instructive about the examples of bipartisanship in our series is the nature of the compromise, actual or incipient, that each embodied. By and large, these deals don’t represent agreement between Democrats and Republicans to split the difference between long-standing positions. Nor did any of them come about because one side or the other suddenly capitulated. Rather, what happened was that some Republicans and Democrats decided to, well, deal.
These were exercises in the art of political compromise as political trading: for example, the housing finance bill that passed the Senate Banking Committee abolished Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, a long-standing GOP goal, in return for a guaranteed flow of low-income housing funds, a long-standing Democratic goal.
The point is not that this particular exchange, or any other, is precisely right or the only possible way. The point is that it occurred. In fact, bipartisan legislation has often come about this way throughout American history; parties and their associated interest groups have swapped priorities, not just melded or shared them. That’s the form compromise will have to take in 2015 and beyond, if it is to occur at all, given the distillation of the two parties into ideologically, geographically and demographically distinct entities.
Indeed, it’s high time all concerned spent less energy lamenting this development (though it is lamentable), and more energy coping with it — pragmatically, for the sake of national stability and unity. Looked at from that point of view, the idea of getting beyond gridlock is not naive, quixotic or even excessively optimistic. It’s the new definition of realism.
— From the Washington Post