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| COMING TOGETHER | |
 December 19, 2000  |
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Exploring bipartisanship in a 50-50 senate and a narrow Republican majority in the House.
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Professor Lowi, is bipartisan an achievable or even a desirable goal? |
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| Is bipartisanship possible? | ||||||||||||||||||||
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GWEN IFILL: Congressman Michel you had a reputation when you were on the Hill as being someone who was willing to find that middle ground, to come to the middle of the party lines. Do you think bipartisanship is achievable and desirable?
GWEN IFILL: So are you saying that people are pressuring President-elect Bush too quickly to race to the middle? BOB MICHEL: I think there's no question about it. People want immediate, instant answers. They're not going to have those for the time being. Let's face it. As I said, it will be a month away before we'll get a plan laid out in the inaugural address. I imagine it will pretty much mirror what George W. has been talking about. And then, of course, from that point on, you'll have the committees organized and with that, as you mentioned, the tightness in both Houses of the Congress, even getting themselves organized to be able to function effectively, that will be something to do, not only in January but in February. |
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| A rush to the middle | ||||||||||||||||||||
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GWEN IFILL: Senator Mitchell, yesterday when President-elect Bush met with Dick Gephardt, the Minority Leader in the House, Congressman Gephardt said that people are always saying to him two seemingly conflicting things: One is stand up for what you believe in and the other is why don't you guys compromise more. Is there a middle ground there somewhere?
GWEN IFILL: Professor Jarvis, one of the current members of Congress who has been accused of a little bit of partisan rhetoric is Tom DeLay. He said earlier this week or last week, I believe, the things we have been dreaming about, he's speaking about the Republican majority now, we can now do. Is that possible?
GWEN IFILL: Do you think it will simply disappear? SONIA JARVIS: Well, I give the concept of bipartisanship about 31 more days - until after the inauguration. Then I think all bets will be off. And each party will try and shape the agenda in a way that they think will help their party's chances overall. Now, having said that, I think that President-elect Bush ran on a promise to be a unifier and to make an attempt to reach across the aisle. And I think the American public is waiting to see how that plays out. |
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| Partisanship - a good thing? | ||||||||||||||||||||
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GWEN IFILL: Professor Lowi, this takes us back to some of your writings. You have said that you believe that there is such a thing as constructive partisanship -- that is being partisan is not necessarily all bad. Elaborate on that.
GWEN IFILL: Excuse me. And how can you argue for this idea of constructive partisanship? Even Newt Gingrich is now quoted today as saying that there is no more mandate for a hard right agenda, that there is no agenda here for confrontations. That's coming from the master of confrontation, Newt Gingrich. THEODORE LOWI: Well, there's no hard right agenda that will get passed by majority vote. But what is required if you go by public decisions, made by majorities, that requires that you exercise some effort at persuasion. Newt Gingrich is very good at that. He assassinated some of his opposition. They turned around and assassinated him. And that appeared as though partisanship always means bickering. Partisanship means an effort to persuade where you keep your own group together and you try to chip off a few of the others in public debate in order to reach a majority. If you can't, then you won't get anything done. But then the public will start putting pressure until there is more of an inclination to decide -- the same with court appointments. If we go along for a long time with eight members of the court -- with seven members of the court eventually there will be enough persuasion about enough individuals so that we will fill those vacancies but we can't put compromise first. We have to determine what the issues are, debate what those are and engage in some kind of persuasion. Then we've got good party government. GWEN IFILL: Congressman Michel, do you agree with that? If not, do you think it's possible to go too far down that path to bipartisanship?
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| Civility above all else | ||||||||||||||||||||
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GWEN IFILL: Senator Mitchell, Congressman Michel just talked about the clash of ideas. What kinds of ideas, what issues are we going to see that will lend themselves most easily toward these two, this very narrowly divided Congress getting something accomplished?
GWEN IFILL: Professor Jarvis, let's assume for a moment that there are central issues that everyone can agree on. Who gets to decide - E. J. Dionne in the Washington Post wrote about this today - who gets to decide where that center is?
GWEN IFILL: Okay. Thank you, everybody, very much. |
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GWEN
IFILL: A close presidential election, a narrowly divided Congress--
how will anything ever get done in Washington? The first answer on the
tip of almost every tongue these days seems to be bipartisanship. But
like everything else in this complicated political year, that may be
tougher to do than it is to say. For thoughts on that subject, we turn
to two former Congressional leaders: Republican Bob Michel, who was
once House Minority Leader, and Democrat George Mitchell, once the leader
of the Senate; and to two political scientists: Theodore Lowi of Cornell
University, and Sonia Jarvis of George Washington University. 
THEODORE
LOWI: It's achievable. We've done it. We've had experience with it.
I don't find it desirable, although I suspect I'm in the minority. To
me bipartisanship is a political strategy. It's not evil but it's dangerous
and it must be undertaken with care. 
BOB
MICHEL: Well, I'll tell you when I was leader for 38 years in the minority,
I had no other alternative -- I could have a 100 percent vote on my
side and have nothing -- unless I worked with the other side of the
aisle. Now, having said that, I think we're getting a little bit ahead
of things here to some degree with respect to the President, for example,
President-elect had... He campaigned on a program. He has got every
right to submit that program to the Congress and to the American people.
Of course, one or the other elements that was talked about so little
during the course of the campaign, whether it was Al Gore or George
W. Bush, was what the Congress was going to end up doing with their
proposals. And here we are, better than a month away from inauguration
day, and then this place runs so slowly at times, even in the best of
times, and so when you go... have to have hearings, for example, the
discussion on the tax bill or on the education bill or all the rest,
they are going to be considerable input on the part of the Congress
and only after the proposals are made, they say the President proposes,
the Congress disposes. Well, we'll see how much of it is adopted and
how much of it gets cast aside. 
GEORGE
MITCHELL: Well, of course, the American public, like people everywhere,
regularly do hold and convey to their leaders conflicting messages.
And one of the conflicting messages has always been don't bicker, don't
engage in party politics, but do it the way that we think it ought to
be done. I think it's a mistake to assume that there can be or should
be complete agreement on all issues. That simply isn't the case. It
won't be the case. It shouldn't be the case. I define bipartisanship
as trying to identify certain key issues on which you can achieve some
consensus. I think clearly education comes to mind, as one which both
parties campaigned on -- and in those areas of disagreement, try to
eliminate the overheated rhetoric sometimes poisonous rhetoric which
has infected politics in recent years that tries to demonize or brand
someone with whom there's disagreement as evil or corrupt. I think you
can have reasonable disagreement in our system without this corrosive
language. I was Senate Majority Leader for six years. Bob Dole was the
Minority Leader. We disagreed daily on many issues. Not once ever in
private or in public did we have a harsh or cross word between us. And
so I think it is possible to have that kind of responsible disagreement,
and I hope that does occur. 
SONIA
JARVIS: Well certainly it's possible. Given the control of the White
House, the Senate by one vote, and the Congress. However, I think what's
different about this election cycle than we've seen in other election
cycles is that President-elect Bush enters office without a mandate.
The agenda he ran on was not voted for by a majority of the voters.
In fact, they voted for the agenda that was represented by Vice President
Gore. So under those conditions, I think it's interesting to see this
discussion about bipartisanship, which I think is a reflection of the
desire for some type of healing process to occur after this very, very
divisive general election. However, I think that the Republicans run
a risk of running on an agenda that the American people did not support
by a majority of the voting public. Certainly the American people will
have an opportunity two years from now during the mid- term elections,
during the redistricting process and in other elections, to indicate
whether or not they agree with Mr. Delay and his views about a conservative
agenda. However, I think if we look at how the American voting public
has been expressing its preferences over the last decade, indeed, we
can, I think, take certain lessons from the very close divisions within
each of the important bodies. We can look at Congress; we can look at
the U.S. Senate. It hasn't been that close in decades. We can certainly
even look at the Supreme Court. What will bipartisanship mean when it's
time to appoint a new Justice to the Supreme Court?
THEODORE
LOWI: Partisanship has been given a bad name in recent years especially
by Tom Delay and Newt Gingrich and so on. I admire their partisanship.
The trouble is they thought to disagree they had to be disagreeable.
I'd like to play back on what George Mitchell said a few moments ago
-- that he never exchanged an angry, negative kind of word with his
opposition. Partisanship, when you mean that, you mean party government.
It still requires a great deal of civility. That's what's been lost.
So when people talk partisanship, what they are really saying is follow
me just as they would say God or say mandate. But there really is a
political strategy saying follow me. It's a way by which leadership
can get together and make public decisions privately. The nice thing
about partisanship is that these are public decisions made publicly.
BOB
MICHEL: Well, I would... I applaud George Mitchell for what he said
because quite frankly, we had that same relationship while I was in
the House and he was in the Senate. We talked about some very ticklish
subjects from time to time. And this... sometimes I'm a little distressed
that they think the legislative process is a marshmallow kind of a process.
It's where ideas clash and where they have to be fought out on... verbally
and talked about very, very thoroughly. That's the whole essence of
the legislative process. Now, the real key here, of course, is don't
lose your head and keep it cool and don't let personalities get involved.
Then you can always go, after your speech and the other person's speech,
you can still get together afterwards and talk it all over in a calm
atmosphere. That's what we've got to strive for. 
GEORGE
MICHEL: Well, as I said, I think the area of cooperation suggests itself
clearly in education, perhaps in Medicare. I think the area of public
dispute will clearly be over the tax cut. I think it's highly unlikely
that the tax cut, as proposed by Governor Bush, will be enacted. He
has a perfect right to stake it out as a negotiating position. I think
there will be counterproposals. I think even the Republican leadership
in the Congress is not very much persuaded that, as proposed, it can
be enacted. But I think this is all part of the debate. I think out
of it will come a series of tax cuts, more limited and targeted than
that which the Governor has proposed but all a part of the process as
Bob Michel has suggested. I think the same is true of Social Security.
I think there are very sharply differing positions ideologically on
some aspects of Social Security that will have to be worked out. But
I emphasize there cannot be in any realistic sense agreement on everything,
and you wouldn't want that. What is most important is identifying a
few areas in which you can cooperate right from the outset and on the
others of disagreement doing it in a reasonably civil way. Governor
Bush campaigned and I think it contributed to his victory on the argument
that he's the person best suited to do that. That's the test that remains
before him. 
SONIA
JARVIS: Well, certainly, the President-elect will enjoy a period of
time where he has the opportunity to set the stage for discussion about
public issues. To pick up on points made by both Senator Mitchell and
Congressman Michel, I think it's clear that during their era of leadership
in Congress, they were willing to reach across the aisle and work together.
I'm not sure in this current atmosphere if we're going to find that
same type of leadership, where you find both Houses willing to work
together on issues that the American public has indicated that they
care deeply about, including education, Social Security, health care
reform, Medicare, as some of the issues that were debated during this
most recent election. So it's a question of how will the debate, the
public debate over these issues, be framed; and who will lead the charge
either from a party standpoint or in terms of the White House versus
the Congress, to set the debate and the terms for that debate.