Why we all can't get along

Since the 2010 Republican wave election and subsequent legislative obstruction, the American public seems suddenly obsessed with bipartisanship.

A flurry of inane establishment op-eds bemoaning a decline of bipartisanship in Congress has surrounded nearly every major political event in the last few years.

The harm that our extremely polarized, paralyzed legislature can do is not in question.
The current Congress’ failure to compromise and take action on a number of important issues has hurt millions of Americans.

Yet, the complaints coming from the opinion-makers approach this problem the wrong way.

Rather than placing the blame for the harm squarely where it belongs — with a Republican party enthralled with corporate interests and the extremist minority of its electorate — Congress treat the very fact that disagreement exists as a cardinal sin.
In their eyes, bipartisanship is no longer a means to an end or a method of building consensus and compromise.
 
Instead, it has become an end goal in itself. Being insufficiently bipartisan is a consistent theme of criticism of lawmakers.

For example, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, accused the CIA of withholding important information and hacking of government email accounts. People were horrified that a senator could doubt the CIA, the very agency designed to protect us from foreign threats.

As Conor Fridersdorf writes in the Atlantic, however, we should not be angry at Feinstein for criticizing the CIA. In fact, we should see it as a sign that “our adversarial, Madisonian system may be alive after all.” The conflict between Feinstein and the CIA is perhaps a sign that our democracy is working as it should.

Much like our judicial system, our political system is designed to be adversarial.
Each branch of the government is expected to check the powers of the others.
Congress hashes out its differences in debate and voting. Committees, like that which Feinstein leads, are supposed to keep oversight on government agencies.

The yearning for bipartisan compromise, combined with the sharp right turn of the Republican Party, caused the Democrats to become more conservative in an effort to appear centrist or open to compromise.

Republicans now push the boundaries of American political thought even further to the right, all the while declaring anything to their left (even their own former positions) un-American.

This is the source of our problems, and obsessing over bipartisanship adds to it.

The problem in our political system is not disagreement in itself, but rather those who simply obstruct.

This problem will not be solved by lurching toward an imagined center.
Unanimity of opinion should not be a goal in its own right.

Disagreement makes democracy better, and it is an integral part of our political system.

estahr@indiana.edu