THOSE AREN'T RETIREES -- THEY'RE LOBBYISTS. I couldn't hope to match Ezra's skewering of the Bipartisan Policy Center, a new think tank whose $7 million in funding achieved its obvious goal, which was to produce a single glowing David Broder column. But I will note two things:
1. What portion of the $7 million was spent to hire the graphic designer who came up with the very elegant logo made up of two half-arcs, one red and one blue, aligned roughly like the dome of the Capitol? Visually -- gorgeous. But the red half-arc and the blue half-arc don't meet. There is a gap between them. If the point is bipartisanship, and that's your only point, shouldn't the red part and the blue part actually touch?
2. More importantly, the whole premise of Broder's column and the organization is that people like these former partisan leaders (Howard Baker, Bob Dole, George Mitchell and Tom Daschle) never talk to each other or collaborate. But they most certainly do. Where? In the lobbying firms where they work! Hello? From their lengthy bios on the Bipartisan Policy Center site, you would get no indication that these gentlemen have any other current jobs, and Ezra even declares that "they're retired," perhaps deceived by the fact that their average age is 75. But like all good Washingtonians, they have more jobs than the "Hey Mon" family from "In Living Color."
In fact, two of them work together at the very same law firm: Alston & Bird, where Daschle (not a lawyer) is "Special Policy Advisor" and Dole is "Special Counsel" in the "Legislative and Policy Practice." And both, of course, have many other affiliations, ranging from peddling boner pills for Pfizer to being a fellow at the Center for American Progress. Mitchell, who is currently chair of Disney Corporation, is also a partner in the law firm DLA Piper and chair of its "Government Controversies Practice." Baker, age 81, is the slacker of the group, with only two jobs outside of the new think tank, one at his Tennessee law firm and the other as Senior Advisor at Citigroup, where he presumably has the opportunity to find bipartisan common ground with Bob Rubin.
This is not just trivia. It goes directly to what is so maddening about these efforts to create bipartisanship. It's pretending there's something new about something as old as the Tidal Basin -- the permanent government of reliably bipartisan corporate politics and lobbying. Maybe that whole "K Street Project" thing got them off track for a few years, but now they're back -- and armed with foundation money so it even seems high-minded! I'm looking forward to an end of the fiercely polarized partisanship of the Bush-DeLay era. But if it means a restoration of the same old bipartisan lobbying culture, I'm sure Mr. Broder will be happy, but count me out.
--Mark Schmitt