George W. Bush is looking for some Democrats to give him what he candidly calls "cover" for his plan to privatize Social Security. Democrats are resisting. Is this another deplorable case of partisan gridlock?
Hardly.
In the standard fable about partisanship, the American electorate is mostly middle-of-the-road. The voters want the parties to work together to solve national problems. But both parties have become captured by extremists.
The voters are certainly sick of partisan wrangling. But everything else about this fable is wrong.
Consider who is thwarting bipartisan solutions. The big threat facing the economy is the deficit. Bush has rammed through one tax cut after another, ballooning the national debt to dangerous levels. No bipartisanship here.
Bush, narrowly elected both times, is determined to pack the federal judiciary with hard-right judges. One editorial writer after another has urged him to appoint moderates. Nothing doing.
On Social Security, Bush appointed a commission stacked with members committed to one outcome -- privatization. Bush is now pursuing bipartisan cover for his effort to splinter the government's most successful and valued program, but he has no appetite for compromise.
Bush told The Wall Street Journal, "I have a responsibility to provide the political cover necessary for members [of Congress]." Translation: The president needs to rope in some Democrats, to reassure nervous Republicans who fear voter retribution. So far, he has just one Democratic taker in the House and none in the Senate.
Bush just appointed another commission, on "tax simplification." As with Social Security, the conclusion is known in advance: shift taxes off income and onto consumption, which will further burden working people.
The commission is nominally bipartisan. Its co-chair is former Louisiana senator John Breaux, a conservative Democrat who has spent much of his career providing cover to Republican plans, as in the case of the Breaux-Thomas commission which urged replacing Medicare with vouchers.
Under Bush, there have been four episodes of bipartisanship, each revealing. The first, in 2001, was No Child Left Behind. Democrats agreed to tougher standards for public schools and Republicans agreed to more federal funds. Bush then turned around and unilaterally cut the promised funding by almost $30 billion.
The second was the war against Taliban-led Afghanistan, after September 11. Both parties supported it. Bush then strong-armed Democrats into supporting his resolution for a second war, in Iraq, but once the ink was dry he stopped consulting Democratic leaders. The policy would have been far less of a calamity if he had been more bipartisan.
The Sarbanes-Oxley law of 2003 toughen regulation against conflicts of interest after the Enron scandal. The administration and congressional Republicans, defending corporate allies, had stalled all year. Only when the scandal threatened to engulf the White House did the administration shift ground and Rep. Michael Oxley, one of the chief Republican obstructionists, hastily added his name to Sen. Paul Sarbanes' handiwork.
The final case was the 9/11 Commission. This body was able to work effectively mainly because President Bush, who initially resisted the whole idea, failed to get his first or second choices as chair and ended up appointing a rare, independent Republican, former New Jersey Governor Tom Kean.
The "bipartisanship" that Bush seeks on Social Security is window dressing, not compromise.
Pre-Bush, genuine bipartisanship was common. One example was Clinton's welfare reform. Another was the 1983 Greenspan Commission, which rescued Social Security. President Ronald Reagan, unlike Bush, appointed leaders from both parties who shared a commitment to saving the present program. Republicans accepted a modest tax increase. Democrats accepted modest benefit cuts. The program gained 70 years of fiscal health.
The reality is this: One party has indeed been captured by extremists. But the other one has moved steadily towards the center.
Republicans are in the hands of theocrats and fiscal radicals so keen on dismantling government that they don't care how high the deficit goes. Meanwhile, the average Democratic senator or representative today holds roughly the views of yesterday's moderate Republicans.
Since Clinton, Democrats have been the party of budget balance. Since Carter, they have joined Republicans in supporting de-regulation. Just a handful of Democrats still speak of Roosevelt- scale expansions of public purpose, such as national health insurance.
Only on issues of tolerance -- gay rights, women's rights, rights of the disabled, affirmative action -- have Democrats continued to push democracy outward, and they have paid dearly.
The lesson? Bipartisan solutions are always possible. But when you read the next lazy piece of writing allocating equal blame for the current "partisan gridlock," consider who is really blocking progress.
Robert Kuttner is co-editor of The American Prospect. A version of this article originally appeared in the Boston Globe.
