Steven Pearlstein: The myth of Washington bipartisanship and the art of true compromise
From yesterday’s Washington Post:
The only way a democratic system like ours can work is if the majority party acknowledges that winning an election means winning the right to set the agenda and put the first proposal on the table, though not the right to get everything it wants. By the same logic, if members of the minority party want to influence that policy, they have to understand that it will require them to accept some things they don’t like to get some things they do.
All this is rather elementary stuff, but trust me when I say that until recently, you’d have trouble finding anyone who seemed to understand it. For years, the reigning philosophy from both sides has been “It’s our way or the highway.” It has reached the point where people don’t know how to hammer out a compromise even when they might be so inclined, as we saw during the charade put on by the “gang of six” trying to negotiate a health-care compromise in the Senate. That dynamic is unlikely to change until the voters get so disgusted that they are willing to indiscriminately turn out all incumbents, irrespective of party and ideology. Perhaps we have finally reached that tipping point.
Add comment February 6th, 2010
