My latest column at TAP takes on the absence of the elusive beast called "bipartisanship" and the culmination of the long effort to finally do away with the filibuster. An excerpt:
The most troubling aspect of the Republican performance on the stimulus package was that, viewed rationally, they were not wrong. If Barack Obama passes $800 billion of government spending through a Democratic Congress and the infusion of federal money accelerates job creation, than the one industry likely to contract is "Republican politicians." Obama's approval ratings will rise, as will those of his partners in the Democratic Congress. They will campaign on their record in 2010 and make gains in the midterm elections. Republican congressmen will lose their jobs. Those who don't lose their jobs will become less powerful as their numbers dwindle. But they can profit from Obama's failure. And that's their current strategy: attack the stimulus, try and make it smaller and less effective, express united opposition to its existence, and attempt to wrest electoral advantage if it fails. It is in the minority's interest, in other words, for the majority party to prove ineffectual at addressing America's most urgent problems. Fundamentally, all successful opposition party campaigns boil down to the same message: We told you so. When the opposition can't say that, as with the Democrats in the aftermath of the Iraq War, they tend to struggle. In the House, this incentive structure doesn't much matter. The minority is a passive, albeit vocal, observer. The structure of the Senate, however, makes it possible for the minority to effectively ensure the failure of the majority. Which brings us to the filibuster. "The filibuster is almost as old as America itself," editorialized The New York Times in late 2004. "In 1790, senators filibustered to prevent Philadelphia from becoming the permanent U.S. capital. In the centuries since, senators have used their privilege of unlimited debate to fend off actions supported by a bare majority of the Senate, but deeply offensive to the minority." That's the traditional history of the filibuster. It's the sort of empty fluff you might find in a book report for a high school civics class. But the actual history of the filibuster tells a rather different story. Far from being a sacrosanct feature of American politics, the filibuster is, every few generations, understood to be so detrimental to governance that it is radically weakened.