The Obama administration has pursued bipartisanship for so long without success that I'm ready to find the concept debunked on Snopes.com. Could it be any more obvious that the GOP leadership's current strategy is to deny the president a legislative victory -- of any kind, even if it means doing a 180 on what they've claimed to support in the past? They don't even try to keep it a secret; Sen. Jim Bunning (R-Ky.) recently admitted as much to a CNBC interviewer. When Democrats say "bipartisanship," the minority party hears "more years in the wilderness."
And the plan is working for them. If voters reject the Dems in November, it won't be because they legislated too far to the left or right: It will be because they were outflanked by their opposition, and didn't get to legislate at all. Americans hate weak leaders even more than ones who are wrong-headed, but steadfast: Witness the reelection of George W. Bush. Voters want the candidates they support to appear sure about what they're doing, because if they wanted to find someone who didn't know how to fix the country's problems, they could look in a mirror.
This isn't such a bad thing. The only ones surprised that people expect results from DC are legislators who ran to win job security. So while the GOP's ideas, or lack of them, aren't worth over-examining, their methods are. Whether they're setting the agenda or opposing it, here's what they do that the majority party needs to do, too:
- They get out in front of an issue and frame the debate. The Dems need their own Frank Luntz, someone who's equally good at concocting pithy phrases in a language lab. Faster than you can say "obstructionism," Republicans respond to thoughtful legislation like healthcare with wrongheaded but emotion-churning phrases like "death panels." This puts the Democrats, with their carefully-reasoned arguments, on the defensive. Then the President has to go out and deliver an impassioned, soaring speech to clarify his intentions. He inevitably impresses, but by then the waters have already been muddied. Berkeley professor of linguistics George Lakoff has made a career of this type of term-crafting, and should be Googled for inspiration. Whatever terms party leaders agree on, they should be repeated often, with the same iron discipline Republicans show -- minus the distortions and fabrications.
- They won't be shamed into cooperating. From what I can tell, a goal of the upcoming jobs legislation is, besides putting unemployed Americans back to work, to embarrass the inevitably naysaying Republicans into explaining why they hate jobs. But if history is a predictor, they're most likely going to frame their refusal in some kind of "It'll increase the deficit" or "I'm not going to advance a socialist agenda" nonsense. Then the Democrats will lapse into the default mode of going on the defensive, arguing amongst themselves and dropping the ball. The current GOP understands one thing, and that's, in the immortal words of Mr. Karl Rove, "Never apologize, never explain." That's why the Dems need to avail themselves of every procedural move at their disposal, because:
- Republicans wouldn't hesitate to do anything and everything they can to pass legislation they favor. To be fair, they believe that what they're doing is what the constituents who elected them want them to do. And for the same reason, Dems need to be just as ruthless. First, they should eliminate or seriously revise the procedural filibuster, which basically rewrites the Constitution to require 60 Senate votes for a bill's passage. Tom Harkin of Iowa says he intends to introduce legislation to reform this bill-killer, but he needs the support of his peers, not to mention voters' pressure on them. The Democrats should also use reconciliation, the procedure that requires 51 votes for passage of a bill, whenever possible. As David Plouffe recently editorialized in the Washington Post, nothing will bring American voters onboard the majority bandwagon like passing good legislation, even if it takes creative thinking to do it. For example, Minnesota's Al Franken has proposed some creative solutions to the Healthcare debate that involve reconciliation first, and continued fixes second.
The usual suspects would whine and stamp their feet, but they've proven that they intend to do that no matter what the Democrats do. So what do they have to lose?