One of the things that’s been hard for me to understand about our president is how all his talk of bipartisanship—and his apparent firm belief in his ability to work in a bipartisan fashion—squared with his extremely partisan voting record. In her column today, Carol Platt Liebau makes a point that I think explains this:
From his days on The Harvard Law Review forward, Barack Obama gained a reputation for “bipartisanship.” The problem? His much vaunted bridge-building was always a matter more of style than of substance. He would treat those who disagreed with him with great politeness and civility, listen their views, and then ignore them.In environments like a law school campus, or Chicago city politics, or Illinois state politics—where liberals overwhelmingly outnumber conservatives—bipartisan words, without action, are enough. Where conservatives are otherwise completely disregarded and routinely treated with contempt, respectful words can secure their support and even a certain degree of affection. Throughout his life, Barack Obama has blossomed primarily in liberal hothouses; perhaps it’s no surprise that he concluded that a little lip service would fulfill the demands of bipartisanship. . . .Perhaps that’s why the President believed that simply talking to Republicans would be enough to secure their support for the stimulus package, even though the final product reflected none of their input.
Of course, as she goes on to note, real bipartisanship requires more than that—and more than that the Obama-Pelosi administration wasn’t willing to give. You can always find a few marginal members of the GOP to pick off, but that’s all they could manage; the result isn’t real bipartisanship, it’s what we might call “RINO bipartisanship” (kudos to Glenn Foden):