Is Bipartisanship Really a Thing?

Is 'working across the aisle" code for a nostalgic longing for a politics that no longer exists?

May 30, 2021

“The polarized, oppositional and – crucially – highly competitive atmosphere of today’s politics allows for little more than obstructionist partisan politics.”
Augustus Bayard, Opinions Editor, The Brown Daily Herald, May 13, 2021

Politicians must like the way the word “bipartisan” rolls off their tongues- they say it often enough. It is their Holy Grail, a shibboleth for the two parties working together to pass legislation. Krysten Sinema, the enigmatic Democratic Senator from Arizona, is opposed to eliminating the filibuster because it “encourages bipartisan cooperation”. Senator Joe Manchin made plain the same position in a Washington Post op-ed, stating his goal is to “to usher a new era of bipartisanship“. It’s notable that Ms. Sinema was not present Friday when the Senate failed to overcome a Republican filibuster and pass the House bill creating an independent bipartisan commission to investigate the January 6 attack on the Capitol. These are the same Republicans who reacted to the first days of the Biden administration with complaints that the President’s executive orders indicated he was not willing to act in a bipartisan way.

It is apparent that politicians are aware voters prefer the two parties work together for the good of the country, to hammer out compromises and enact laws. Once upon a time, in the last century, Congress functioned that way. It was a different time: the parties were not ideological as much as they were regional, and less legislation was passed on party-line votes. Policy differences were not married to party identity. Each party had both liberals and conservatives in Congress and bills passed with support from both sides. The landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964, for example, was passed by a coalition of Northern Democrats and Republicans, overcoming a filibuster by Southern Democrats. Even the way Congress operated was much different than it is today: Committees in both Houses shaped legislation before it come to the floor. Committee chairs wielded a great deal more power than they do today. In today’s Senate, for example, the drafting of most bills is controlled by leadership and the Majority leader decides which bills come to the floor and what amendments may be offered. Being in the majority in Congress is now the goal of both parties for ideological reasons.

The aforementioned Civil Rights Act had a backlash effect: Over the next 2 decades, Southern Democrats, as President Lyndon Johnson predicted, emigrated to the Republican Party. What had been the Solid South for the Democrats since the post-Civil War era morphed into the backbone of the Republican voter base. In 1994, the Republicans won the majority in the House for the first time in 40 years. The elevation of Newt Gingrich to Speaker of the House marked the completion of the transition to ideological politics. Congressional politics became a zero-sum game. Though there are about a third more registered Democrats than Republicans nationally, the GOP had structural advantages** which resulted in very close national elections with control of the White House and both Houses of Congress often changing from election cycle to election cycle.

With the parties narrowly divided along ideological lines, the consequence is what political scientist Frances E. Lee has described as a disincentive for the opposition party to collaborate with the party in power; the minority party, hoping to attain the majority in the next cycle, does not want to help the majority burnish an image of effective governance. In like fashion, the majority has no incentive to elevate the status of the minority. It is true many bills pass each House with support from both parties. These are often procedural matters or bills that members of both parties support- criminal justice reform, The First Step Act, passed the Republican-controlled Senate in 2018 by a vote of 87-12 with support from hardline conservatives and progressive liberals alike. Bills dealing with crises also receive bipartisan backing: the Covid relief bill of 2020 (CARES Act) passed the Senate, 96-0, and the House by a voice vote.

But it is the bills that offer major reforms or other significant changes that pass only on a partisan basis. The Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) received no Republican votes in either the Senate or the House of Representatives when it was passed in 2009. No Democrats voted for the GOP’s 2017 Tax Cut bill which was passed using the filibuster-avoiding budget reconciliation process in the Senate. Reconciliation was also used this year to pass President Biden’s $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan through the Senate after Senate Republicans balked at the price tag.

Perhaps it is true that bipartisanship does not yield transformative legislation. Imagine attempting to get the New Deal or Civil Rights bills through today’s divided Congress. This is the case the New York Times columnist Ezra Klein made last month:

The yearning for bipartisanship shapes the Senate in profound ways. For instance, it helps the filibuster survive. The filibuster is believed — wrongly, in my view — to promote bipartisanship, and so it maintains a symbolic appeal for those who wish for a more bipartisan Senate… The case for bipartisanship is that we are a divided nation, and legislation should reflect the best ideas of both sides, while not overly antagonizing either… But in practice, bipartisan governance does not result in legislation featuring the best ideas of Republicans and the best ideas of Democrats. At least in the modern era, that’s likelier to happen through partisan governance. Bills both parties agree on are often bills that have seen their most dramatic or unusual ideas sanded off.
We are a divided country, but one way we could become less divided is for the consequences of elections to be clearer. When legislation is so hard to pass, politics becomes a battle over identity rather than a battle over policy.
A world of partisan governance is a world in which Republicans and Democrats both get to pass their best ideas into law, and the public judges them on the results. That is far better than what we have now, where neither party can routinely pass its best ideas into law, and the public is left frustrated that so much political tumult changes so little.

There are two take-aways from this discussion: One, bipartisanship should be seen as a means, not an end. The second, perhaps not so apparent in the myopic vision of Krysten Sinema or Joe Manchin, the nation itself is bipartisan in its policy preferences, more than its elected representatives in Washington. Polling shows broad public support- from both Democrats and Republicans- for much of the Biden agenda despite the grousing by Congressional Republicans. As Biden adviser Anita Dunn told CNN in January, “Even with narrow majorities in Congress, he has the opportunity to build broad bipartisan support for his program — not necessarily in Congress but with the American people.”

In Federalist No. 10, Madison reminds us that, if a minority faction seeks to interfere with the functions of government, “relief is supplied by the republican principle, which enables the majority to defeat its sinister views by regular vote.”

Our 21st Century politicians would do well to revisit the wisdom of their 18th Century counterpart.

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