Bi-Partisanship is a DC Obsession

Just read this a moment:

On health care, we needed a market-driven plan that decreases the percentage of uninsured Americans without convoluting the U.S. health care system. Just such a plan sprang out of conservative think tanks and was tested by a GOP governor in Massachusetts, Mitt Romney.

Instead of a bipartisan agreement to bring that plan to scale, we got more partisan warfare. The GOP resisted, Obama surrendered his mantle of bipartisanship, and Democrats muscled through a one-sided law that has never been popular with a majority of the public.

Put aside the inaccuracies here. According to Fournier, President Obama surrendered bipartisanship by using the plan of his chief rival, who is in the other party, because that party did not accept their own plan? So basically, Romney is a Republican, the health care plan was Romney's, President Obama accepted that plan despite being in the other party, then Romney's party rejected the plan he had created, and so the President is now partisan. Right.

I get that bi-partisanship on major national issues that effect the lives of millions would be good. To be completely fair, the last time that happened though was "No Child Left Behind," and today that law is highly controversial amongst the actual stakeholders (yes, I'm ignoring the bailouts because there was no legislative process involved in them). The last time anything passed bi-partisanly that worked was Welfare Reform (which I know some on the further left hate, but it has worked well), and that's nearly 20 years ago. Sure, that's bad, but most of the reason Congress doesn't operate bi-partisanly at this point is that it is rewarded for not doing so, by the same pundits who crow about it.

Look, if I tip my hat to Mitch McConnell and John Boehner on anything at all, it's that they realized that the punditry are a bunch of clueless clowns, and that there's no reason to "live" in their Washington. Did anyone penalize either of them for being partisan and obstructing an entire Presidency? No. They realized the President had little reach into a number of Congressional districts and states after his 2008 victory, and they played the game accordingly from there. Kudos to them for such a ruthless push for power. The point is though, they realized early on that the public won't penalize you for being partisan, even if the DC elite will scow at you. Under the current system, with states mostly locked in as "red" or "blue," and with gerrymandered districts for about 400 members of the House, the incentive structure to work together is close to zero. They are sadly right.

Here's the thing though- the President actually played well within this system too in the first two years of his Presidency. He passed the Stimulus, he passed the Affordable Care Act, he passed Dodd-Frank, and he even got Cap-and-Trade through the House. He obviously did a lot more than that, but he got three big-ticket items through, which is a lot.

The point is though that this is how Washington is now, and will be, unless we start to push back on it as a public. As is, nothing will change.