Barack Obama has made "bipartisanship" a major goal of his presidency. This goal trumps everything; we could have good health care reform legislation, but that wouldn't be "bipartisan". We could have held the Bush administration to the same standards of justice that we hold all other Americans, but that wouldn't be "bipartisan". We could have pulled our soldiers out of both Iraq and Afghanistan, but that wouldn't be "bipartisan". We could have ended DADT and DOMA but that wouldn't be "bipartisan". The list goes on and on and on and because "bipartisanship" trumps everything with this administration, we will always end up worse off than we would be without "bipartisanship".
But let's look at this from the Republicans' perspective; a Democratic president is elected and makes clear before the entire country that "bipartisanship" is his number one priority. "Change the way Washington works," "disagree without being disagreeable" and all that. The problem for Obama is that he can call for "bipartisanship" all he wants but he has no actual control over it, he represents only half of the equation and it takes two to Tango.
Because Obama has made "bipartisanship" the central premise of his presidency, what better way for Republicans to hand him defeat than to prevent him from achieving that goal? We can call them the "Party of No!" all we want but there is method to their madness. If they keep saying "no", it won't be the Republican Party that is seen as failing, it will be Barack Obama who will be seen as weak and ineffective because he couldn't deliver on the central premise of his presidency: "bipartisanship".
When the Supreme Court reversed a century of decided law with a partisan vote to allow corporations to spend at will, Obama was at it again, promising a "forceful bipartisan response". One thing is for sure though, any "bipartisan" response will not be forceful enough because the partisan Republicans loved the ruling.
When Max Baucus was putting together the committee that would write the Senate health care bill, he purposefully put equal numbers of Democrats and Republicans on the committee despite the fact that he didn't have to. Democrats had won a big majority in the Senate and Baucus - for all intents and purposes - erased that advantage to give Republicans an equal say, which was very "bipartisan" of him but not very smart. This is something that Republicans would have never done with Democrats, they're smarter than that, and this again illustrates the Democrats' devotion to "bipartisanship" at the expense of good governance.
In order for Obama's presidency to succeed, he must abandon this devotion to "bipartisanship", he must make it clear to the American people - most of whom can see it already - that the Republicans are not negotiating in good faith and that "bipartisanship" will only make good legislation bad. We don't need any kind of "bipartisan" response to anything, forceful or otherwise, what we need is a forceful partisan response to the country's problems.
That's precisely what we got with the Bush administration, has there ever been a more partisan administration? America went to the polls in 2008, not to rebuke that partisanship but to rebuke Republican "governance". I think this is where Obama is particularly tone-deaf, I think he believes that the 2008 election was a referendum on partisanship rather than on Republican "governance".
But that isn't the case. A majority of Americans thought that in 2008, the country was heading in the wrong direction. They elected Barack Obama to turn the ship of state around, they did not elect him so that he could share the steering wheel in equal parts with the party that got the boat headed in the wrong direction in the first place.
The American people want partisanship. If you ask them directly "do you want bipartisan solutions or partisan solutions?" they would probably say that they want "bipartisan solutions" but that is asking the wrong question. Ask them if they want a Public Option and they overwhelmingly do, there is even some support for a Public Option among self-identified Republicans. However, the Republicans in Washington want no part of it. So we ended up with the "bipartisan" Senate bill that is little more than a bailout of an already entrenched and broken industry. It is not what the public wants as evidenced by the MA election, but it is a "bipartisan solution".
However, if you gave them the choice between a partisan solution and a bipartisan solution, they will chose the partisan solution as we have already seen (Public Option). If you asked the public whether they want the option to purchase health insurance either from private insurance companies or from the government, or whether they want to prop up the existing insurance industry by subsidizing them to the teeth with taxpayer money further entrenching their government-sanctioned monopoly and giving them no real competition to bend the cost curve, we know what they would choose because they already have; polls still show overwhelming support for the Public Option, and much more so than they support the current Senate bill.
That's what the voters in the MA election said loud and clear, yet it looks like the Obama administration is still too tone-deaf to hear it.
We know that Republicans are not negotiating in good faith, most of America can see this pretty clearly. We know that, while Obama's key goal seems to be "bipartisanship", the Republicans' key goal is the failure of Barack Obama's presidency. Therefore, what incentive do the Republicans have to be "bipartisan"? If they are, it will mean that Obama was successful so there is a ton of disincentive for Republicans. And Obama set his administration up for this failure by promising something to the American people over which he has no control but over which the opposition party has complete control.
With all due repect, Mr. President, it is time for you to govern, and you and your party cannot do that effectively if you continue your devotion to "bipartisanship". It is an either/or situation and so far, you have made the wrong choice. The good news is that there is still plenty of time for you to turn things around and do the right thing for America.