The False Idol of Bipartisanship

Andy Hoover
Sep 6, 2018 · 4 min read

“Some of my best friends are black.”

White people often trot out this old trope in defense of their support for some idea that is laced with racial undertones or, worse, as a caveat to some awful thing they’ve said about race. The line became so overused that it’s now a punchline for people of my generation and younger.

I was thinking about this saying in the week after the death of Senator John McCain. (Stay with me.) For days, the internets was consumed with hot takes about McCain. One of the most common went something like this: “It’s a shame that politicians today can’t be bipartisan like McCain.”

This could be a post about how McCain largely voted with his party and, in fact, pushed policies that were terribly destructive. But that’s for someone else to write.

Instead, I was thinking about, “Some of my best friends are black,” in the context of McCain’s death and the wailing for bipartisanship that followed it for this reason: It’s easy to idolize bipartisanship when you’re not the one with the boot on your neck.

A person shouldn’t need a “best friend” who is Black or brown or an immigrant or Muslim or transgender or gay to have some basic human empathy for others. And this is where the thirst for bipartisanship falls apart. One party, the Republican party, has lost its sense of empathy for others.*

The value of bipartisanship is based on the assumption that both parties have the same goals. Do we? Do both of the dominant political parties today genuinely desire healthcare coverage for all Americans, as one example? In the abstract, pols like Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell and Donald Trump would probably answer, “Yes.” But when forced to make choices that will require some sacrifice — be it tax increases, which are, at their heart, investments in our communities, or increased regulation of corporate insurance companies or letting go of a rhetorical weapon for gaining political power — are they willing to accept it? This isn’t the first term of the Nixon administration, when President Nixon and Senator Ted Kennedy nearly had a deal on healthcare reform. Nixon genuinely wanted healthcare coverage for all, or at least more, Americans. He and Kennedy simply couldn’t get together on the details.

Those days are over. I am not convinced that Democrats and Republicans share the same desired outcomes, on a long list of issues. And that’s where bipartisanship falls apart.

How can bipartisanship exist when one party is comfortable with the fact that parents who came here escaping extreme poverty and violence may never see their children again, because the president and attorney general and administrative bureaucrats from that party felt completely comfortable terrorizing them?

They’re comfortable with it because they aren’t Black. Or brown. Or immigrants. Nor are their friends.

I will grant the cult of bipartisanship one thing: Governing is easier when elected officials approach each other with a desire to work together. But governing in a spirit of bipartisanship only works when both parties share the same goals. For example, we should reasonably expect that our local, state, and federal officials can at least get over the low bar of maintaining roads and bridges. Even that has proven a challenge, though.

If partisanship means drawing clear distinctions between the two competitive political parties, I am completely comfortable with that.

In Letter from a Birmingham Jail, Dr. Martin Luther King famously admonished “the white moderate, who is more devoted to ‘order’ than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice.” And so it is with bipartisanship. It is not an ends to itself.

In my lobbying days, I often said that I wanted Republicans to get right on civil rights issues. It would make the world a better place. A fair, just society is the end we seek. If one party doesn’t share that outcome, then sign me up for partisanship.

Bipartisanship in governance is the ideal way to achieve these goals. If we share the same goals, we can work together. But those who cling to an ideology that punches down at the vulnerable must be defeated at the ballot box by candidates who pursue fair outcomes and will fight for them. There’s a time for war and a time for peace. A wise person knows the difference.

*Democrats aren’t off the hook here and don’t get a pass. But that’s another post for another time.

Andy Hoover

I write about issues, movements, and politics. I do comms for @ACLUPA, but this is my page, not theirs. Views expressed here are my own.

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