Partisanship and the Reverse

I find that it's sometimes hard to criticize excessive partisanship because the alternative, "bipartisanship" is very bad. But by the same token, it's hard to deride the fetishization of bipartisanship because "partisanship" also denotes something that really is bad.

The problem, though, is that both sentiments -- when problematic -- are basically problematic for the same reason, they reflect an unwillingness to consider questions on the merits. Thanks to the psychology of partisanship, for example, I'm much more acutely aware of how Bush's curtailments of civil liberties than I was of the earlier steps in Bush's direction pioneered by Bill Clinton. Similarly, I think the psychology of partisanship sometimes leads people to overestimate the role of "incompetence" (as opposed to the simple impossibility of the mission) in the failures in Iraq. But the bipartisan tick is no better, and basically just amounts to the reverse sin -- assuming that if both sides can be made to agree that X is the solution, then X really will solve the problem. So we need a "bipartisan approach" to Iraq like the Baker-Hamilton Commission whether or not that approach makes sense. We need a bipartisan approach to entitlements rather than a correct one.

In practice, both approaches wind up narrowing the conversation to either a tiny "bipartisan consensus" or else a slightly larger patch of partisan trench warfare. What the country really needs, however, is a widening of the conversation to include various kinds of currently outré ideas. That's why I'm glad whenever Ron Paul gets some attention, even though he's not someone who, all things considered, I think has very sound ideas. And its also why I try to link to stuff from the Project for Defense Alternatives -- they're to my left on their core issues, but the status quo where debates ranges from AEI to Brookings isn't working at all.

Comments

I believe the term you are struggling for is "pragmatism," not in the jaded, cynical sense which it commonly is now used but rather in the sense which Pierce, James, and Dewey used it.

Posted by Duncan Kinder | August 14, 2007 11:39 AM

The problem isn't "partisanship" or "bipartisanship" ... the real issue is that ambitious people no longer feel that it is in their interest to engage in political gamesmanship. We're no longer letting "ambition [...] counteract ambition".

Posted by DAS | August 14, 2007 11:39 AM

Obviously we need pragmatic solutions to these types of problems. Where there is general agreement on the ultimate goals (regional peace/reduction of terrorist threats on the one hand and sustainable entitlement programs on the other) then people SHOULD be able to agree on solutions that work even if they disagree on a host of other issues. The difficulty is that in the two-party system there are political opportunity costs to agreeing with the other side. Both sides have the incentive to use every issue to maximize short term political gain. The purpose of a "bipartisan approach" and blue ribbon commissions is to create a structure where both sides agree to forego the opportunity to capitalize politically in the short term.

On the other hand, where there isn't general agreement on the ultimate goals (although Republicans pretend that there is because what they really want is wildly unpopular) then the "bipartisan approach" will inevitably produce bad solutions. What we need is a candid debate about what our ultimate goals should be.

Posted by Led | August 14, 2007 11:43 AM

Watch out, you're going to get your comments section flooded by Ron Paul supporters. Kind of entertaining, I gotta admit.

Posted by live | August 14, 2007 11:43 AM

Watch out, you're going to get your comments section flooded by Ron Paul supporters. Kind of entertaining, I gotta admit. - live

Hey! I'm not a Ron Paul supporter ... unless you're referring to my repeated pledges to vote Unity '08 if (and only if ... under no other circumstances that I can think of would I support them) they run a Gravel/Paul or Paul/Gravel ticket in '08.

BTW ... how come there are so many Ron Paul supporters here in Tally? My stereotype would be that his supporters would be more in the West. Perhaps this is like Goldwater who's "western" libertarian conservatism was best received in the South for reasons other than its libertarianism per se? And Ron Paul is already a Southerner ...

Posted by DAS | August 14, 2007 12:07 PM

What the country really needs, however, is a widening of the conversation to include various kinds of currently outré ideas.

No more money to the IDF until they agree to abide by the Geneva Conventions.

No more money to Israel until they sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

No more financial support from American taxpayers to help create and sustain illegal colonies on the West Bank.

Do you mean those kind of wild and crazy ideas? Wonder when we'll see that kind of discussion occur within either the Tweedledum or Tweedledee parties, or the "Serious" foreign policy community?

Posted by mrs. ibrahim al-jafaari | August 14, 2007 12:18 PM

You're kind of rocking the "fair and balanced" thing here and setting up as equals two things that are not.

I don't think that "fetishization" of bipartisanship (except for in the privacy of one's own home between consenting adults of course) is a good thing. But bipartisanship by definition, is an effort to incorporate complementary or countervailing ideas. So to the extent that that is a goal in policy creation, it is more likely to come from a bipartisan approach.

Further, the more representatives that are involved in crafting solutions to problems, the more people who are involved albeit indirectly. And since it is not obvious what the "correct" solution is (if it were, we would live under benign despotism), we put a certain degree of faith in democratic theory and the democratic process.

Bipartisanship has its downfalls certainly in particular the creation of counterproductive least common denominator policies. And it is possible for a partisan process to generate "good" solutions for policy challenges.

But the fetishization of the "correct" solution doesn't serve us well either - particularly if it is divorced from some theory about what process creates the best solutions that doesn't rely on the judgment of philosopher kings.

Posted by Micah | August 14, 2007 12:30 PM

I think the psychology of partisanship sometimes leads people to overestimate the role of "incompetence" (as opposed to the simple impossibility of the mission) in the failures in Iraq.

I think you had both. The ideological infighting and rushed, poor planning led to the incompetence. Read George Packer or Tom Ricks. This interview of Rachel Raphel kind of encapsulates it:

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/1022-06.htm

Also, see this interview with Jay Garner:

Garner: ... So then I briefed the president the second week in March on what our organization was like and what--

PBS: What were the president's concerns? What kind of questions was he asking?

Garner: The first thing he asked me, he wanted me to tell him about myself. I told him my background, and Secretary Rumsfeld told him my background.

Then he began asking me questions. "OK, what are you going to do during reconstruction?" Our plan then is we were going to use most of the Iraqi army for reconstruction, we were going to hire them and make them, for lack of a better word, reconstruction battalions and use them to help rebuild the country.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/truth/interviews/garner.html

"Second week in March" is like, days before the war. And President Bush is asking him questions like this? After Bush had been hard-selling an invasion of Iraq for months?

Further in the interview:

PBS: You mentioned that the State Department had done some good planning. They had something called the Future of Iraq Project. What was the attitude towards in the Pentagon towards the work that had been done by the State Department?

Garner: ... It wasn't well received.

PBS: It wasn't well received?

Garner: Yes, but not only in the Pentagon. It wasn't real well received in portions of the executive branch, either. That's not the president or anybody like that, but I mean, there were people in the executive branch that--

PBS: And in the National Security Council--

Garner: Yes, yes.

PBS: They didn't like the work that Warrick had done? [Editor's Note: Tom Warrick was director of the Future of Iraq Project]

I don't know whether they didn't like the work Tom Warrick had done or they didn't like Tom Warrick. Now, I thought Tom Warrick was a very, very astute, very competent guy. But I was not able to get him on the team.

PBS: Why was that, do you think?

Garner: I'm not really sure, Martin. He just wasn't acceptable, I guess. When I asked for him, he just never showed up. He was never part of the team.

PBS: But was it his lack of willingness to join your team?

Garner: Oh, no, no, no. ...

....

PBS: But can you give me any insight into why you think there was this resistance to that work?

Garner: No, I [can't].

PBS: Can you speculate about that?

Garner: No, not unless it was just being normal inter-agency conflicts that you have. It's just part of our way of doing government. ...

PBS: Some of that was around politics, who to support, whether to support the INC or not support the INC?

Garner: Yes.

I think Robin Raphel knows the backstory of this. (And I bet Garner knows too, but won't say explicitly...)

Posted by JJ | August 14, 2007 12:38 PM

More on ideology and incompetence. From a review of Rajiv Chandrasekaran's IMPERIAL LIFE IN THE EMERALD CITY:

Micromanaging and emulating U.S. institutions was ... the instinct of Jay Hallen, the clueless 24-year-old in charge of reopening the Baghdad stock market. His approach was to create one patterned after the New York Stock Exchange. (No, it didn't work.) Nor was Hallen the only inexperienced twentysomething CPA staffer given responsibilities for which he was utterly unprepared. Six of the "ten young gofers" that the CPA had requested from the Pentagon to handle minor administrative tasks found themselves managing Iraq's $13-billion budget. Where did the Pentagon recruit them? From the Heritage Foundation; they had sent their resumes there, looking for work in that conservative think tank.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/14/AR2006091401329.html
There's a lot more in this review. (And probably quite a bit more in the book, too, which I haven't gotten to yet...)

Posted by JJ | August 14, 2007 12:43 PM

This interview of Rachel Raphel...

Ack. Should be Robin Raphel. Sorry...

Posted by JJ | August 14, 2007 12:48 PM

Hello DAS,
I wasn't referring to you -- I had in mind the kind of thing you see in this thread.

Posted by live | August 14, 2007 12:49 PM

The problem, Matt, is that often the solution needs to come from some sort of underlying goal or ideal that the solution is working towards. Sure, narrow technocracy might work for other narrow issues, but on the big issues (like, say, invading Iran), it's more about what you want, and what you're willing to do to get it.

These questions are ideological questions, and at their core, the parties are at least supposed to provide some sort of ideological grounding that you can draw on when providing the answer. Most "partisans" these days, especially on the left, are those people who are actually consistent with those beliefs. Why not go with that, instead of either having nothing at all, or letting the Republicans define the goals before you even start?

Posted by Demosthenes | August 14, 2007 12:58 PM

Speaking of, did Matt ever reply to Anne-Marie Slaughter's reply to him? Not that it matters I guess.

Posted by sniflheim | August 14, 2007 1:03 PM

ARGH. You're still falling into the "binary thinking fallacy" trap. You're setting out two goal posts - partisanship and bipartisanship - declaring them opposites and saying that "neither one is good so I have a hard time criticizing either." Bipartisanship and partisanship are NOT opposites - they're the same damn thing. The only thing that the "bipartisans" do is stake out a "third party" area in the debate and set up camp (they even tell you they're doing it with their talk of "Third Way" politics). Then they set up the same damn binary thinking - except the binary in this case is "what we declare to be the extremes are both wrong and our 'Third Way' approaches are all right - do what we say and not what our opponents say".

That's just partisanship with a veneer of accomodation to it. It's even more corrosive in some ways because they're attempting to set the limits of what counts as acceptable positions by staking out what the two "extremes" are that their "bipartisan" party sits between - cutting off debate for anyone who would argue that even their so-called "extremes" are wrong and the right answer is somewhere else.

Posted by NonyNony | August 14, 2007 1:04 PM

I am trying the same joke more than once, but then again, I do not have my own blog:

it would be a sound compromise to agree to post 5 Commandments on the walls of public building, and a bipartisan commission would make the selection.

Posted by piotr | August 14, 2007 1:09 PM

I'm much more acutely aware of how Bush's curtailments of civil liberties than I was of the earlier steps in Bush's direction pioneered by Bill Clinton.

Well, for my part Clinton's big push in this direction after the Murra bombing looked opportunistic and it ranks high among the things he did that are absolutely infuriating to me, the more so because he was supposed to be the leader of "my" party.

Plus you're a lot younger than me. Age and political awareness has a lot to do with it I'm sure. Though I sometimes think you must have been a wonk all the way back in kindergarten.

Posted by DrBB | August 14, 2007 1:19 PM

"both sentiments -- when problematic -- are basically problematic for the same reason, they reflect an unwillingness to consider questions on the merits."

Right, partisanship is not always problematic, and it's bad to consider it as such. Partisanship as practiced by the Bush administration, as in the Homeland Security bill and the recent FISA bill, is reversing field late in the game, then extracting the maximum possible concessions from the other side under the threat of brutal campaigning. Partisanship by the Democrats means trying to get the GOP to stop filibustering everything, and, in theory, resisting things the administration wants to do out of a good faith belief that they are undesirable.

Joe Klein should be required to write that out in longhand 20 times each day.

Posted by Elvis Elvisberg | August 14, 2007 1:22 PM

I wasn't referring to you - live

You weren't? I thought everyone was referring to me ... I am, after all, the center of the universe (even if only 4-5 read my blog) ;)

Seriously, though ... I knew you weren't. I just figured you just left open the wonderful opportunity for me to plug my Gravel/Paul candidacy idea. I do hope Unity '08 takes up my idea -- it'll make the election far more entertaining, eh?

Posted by DAS | August 14, 2007 1:23 PM

Bipartisanship in this country wouldn't be so bad if our right-wing party wasn't so crazy. The Republicans today are closer to McCarthy than Eisenhower.

Posted by Reality Man | August 14, 2007 1:47 PM

2 steps (or maybe 3)

If you want to get "stuff done", it's best to go in without preconceived biases and just figure out the best solution, whether or not in offends some people's sensibilities.

Of course, sometimes you have to recognize that for some situations there simply isn't a "total solution" and the best you can do is make improvements.

Is partisanship or bipartisanship more likely to get you to the "stuff done" stage? Depending on the situation and the goal, it could be one or the other, but I generally like the idea of bipartisanship, because it's easy to come up with ideas that look good on paper, but those ideas are often stronger after they've been challenged--as long as the challengers are acting in good faith and not, well, being "partisan" (ie poking holes in anything that comes from the other side regardless of what it is)

Posted by JMS | August 14, 2007 2:11 PM

Has the term 'non-partisan' been banned?

Posted by Michael H Schneider | August 14, 2007 2:17 PM

Why is the Project on Defense Alternatives to your left? Where do you differ from them? Just curious.

Posted by mq | August 14, 2007 2:55 PM

What the country really needs, however, is a widening of the conversation to include various kinds of currently outré ideas. That's why I'm glad whenever Ron Paul gets some attention, even though he's not someone who, all things considered, I think has very sound ideas.

Hell, we can't even get the MSM's version of the conversation widened enough to include John Edwards' policy proposals. Or enough for them to point out that the GOP Presidential candidates basically don't have policy proposals.

Again, this goes back to Fallows' piece, which you've linked to, about why Americans hate the media. The people are far more interested in having a serious conversation than the press is, and when a candidate actually tries to put serious ideas out there, the media just ignore him.

Posted by low-tech cyclist | August 14, 2007 3:14 PM

Duh...

Correctness is better than partisanship or bi-partisanship.

Because neither has anything to do with being correct, I think is what you might be trying to say.

As Don Rickles would say, "Great! You win a cookie!"

The problem is, the wider you make the conversation, the more people have problems with the ideas offered, and the quicker their primate instincts come into play.

Humans work on this basis: "If you're right, I'm wrong. And if I'm wrong, I'm dead - and that can't be allowed. So I'm right and you're wrong. And I'll kill you if I have to to prove it."

So the wider you make the conversation, the more these primate instincts get triggered until the "wider suggestions" get marginalized and everyone retreats back to their entrenched positions to take cover.

Matt, you're assuming some significant percentage of humans have the ability to listen with an open mind.

Uhm, are you five years old? :-)

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | August 14, 2007 11:19 PM