The favorite whipping boy of every punditry guru is bipartisanship. The assaults on its elusive worth are themselves bipartisan; on this one and perhaps only matter, the media's universe of Rachel Maddows and Sean Hannitys are in complete and virtuous accord -- How silly, how naive, how utterly laughable, folks, to imagine, say, a Bernie Sanders-Jim DeMint coalition.
In other words, notional "bipartisanship" has matured from whipping boy to straw man. There is no monologue, no column, no air time that speaks or writes itself quite so easily as bipartisanship-bashing.
The underlying problem with all this alarmed ridicule is the deliberate distortion of what Barack Obama has urged and voters (brutally) encouraged. Both want -- and the latter inordinately expects -- Beltway pols to behave like grownups, to shave a demand here and there, to get a little something done on behalf of the multitudes. (The prevailing notion that Beltway pols haven't, over the long run, done just that -- yesterday's historic repeal of DADT? or near universal health care, anyone? -- is another matter, as is Obama's strategic re-emphasis on the two parties working together; that is, his partisan hammer will come down hard after Republicans throw cooperation in his face. It's just a matter of time.)
And this morning, I was sorry to observe, came the inestimable Frank Rich to join the sarcastic Maddows and sneering Hannitys.
To blast the admittedly sentimental concept of clean bipartisanship, Rich's direct target is "No Labels," which harmlessly bills itself as an organization designed to foster "what's best for America." Sublimely naive, no doubt, but, as stated, perfectly harmless. And who knows? Absent the barrels of cyber-ink devoted to assaulting its "toothlessness," No Labels could grow a spine.
But there's no thought more horrifying than that to the hyperpartisans and anti-incrementalists who want it all -- now -- and with as much volume as we can just barely stand (which also happens to be good for the commentariat's business).
Rich's most damning indictment:
The notion that civility and nominal bipartisanship would accomplish any of the heavy lifting required to rebuild America is childish magical thinking, and, worse, a mindless distraction from the real work before the nation. Sure, it would be swell if rhetorical peace broke out in Washington — or on cable news networks — but given that American politics have been rancorous since Boston’s original Tea Party, wishing will not make it so.
That passage is elegantly reconciled with the "Conflict School" of American political history, whose cultural origins in the contentious 1960s consumed with remarkable speed the once-dominant "Consensus School," which, rather self-explanatorily, saw America's past as "exceptional" in the sense of its general stability and ideological harmony. I locate my own interpretation -- one deeply influenced by America's most preeminent political historian, Richard Hofstadter -- somewhere betwixt, but toward consensus.
Mr. Rich, no one I know of, especially myself, expects that civility "would accomplish" the necessary rebuilding of America. That indeed would be "childish magical thinking." But in reality it is only, as noted, a straw man. The inescapable point, Mr. Rich, is that "civility and nominal bipartisanship" -- attitudinally, the notion that America's problems can be overcome only through a political consensus to work the problems and not merely the politics -- is the inescapable starting point of rebuilding America.
What I find immensely ironic about this debate is that I -- a ruthless pragmatist who so often scoffs at progressives' boundless utopianism -- retain confidence that American politics can indeed regain a two-party civility indispensible to socioeconomic progress, while the Frank Riches -- ruthless utopians who so often scoff at others' boundless pragmatism -- have sunk into a bottomless despair.