Bipartisanship and artistic vision

There was a meeting of conservative democrats and "moderate/conservative" Republicans yesterday at which they all agreed (to the press's great cheering) that the era of "partisanship" must end and that Washington must now become a lovefest, led by the next president, who must appoint an equal number of cabinet members from both parties.

Pah.

The myth that's being manufactured here is that "both sides" have engaged in "excessive partisanship" which has hurt the country, so now it's time to stop.

In other news, all the great artists, playwrights, and novelists now must stop following their own visions and crafting compromise works jointly with their fiercest critics. I don't think so.

Let's do a little history (Digby's Hullabaloo has been on this for several days now): in the 1980's, the Congress had the goods on Ronald Reagan's illegal and possibly treasonous Iran-Contra deal, but Democrats decided for the good of the order not to impeach or push the investigations too far. The payback? In the 90s, the Republicans gained control of Congress by first refusing to join in the budget reform that ushered in the surplus (remember that?) and the economic book, but also in making sure Clinton could not pass any health care reform, no matter how business oriented.

After they got control of Congress, they set out to shut down the government, impeach Clinton for lying about sex, and generally run roughshod over the Democrats.

In 2000, both the Senate (50-50) and the Presidency were tied. Where was the coalition government then? Where was the bipartisanship? Instead, the GOP set out to build the "permanent majority" by threatening the "Nuclear Option" of revoking the right to filibuster when the Democrats dared question some of their judicial appointees. Our simian president in 8 years has made absolutely no efforts to include Democrats or to consult them on anything. When the Dems took Congress back in 2006, the GOP reverted to its 90's "block everything" strategy and stopped virtually everything from getting through, launching 62 filibusters in just one year.

Now that it looks like another big Democratic year, with possibly all three branches going liberal, it's time for bipartisanship? Right.

Meanwhile, back at the arts, you have to give Dana Gioia and his staff a lot of credit for growing the NEA during such a take-no-prisoners era. One could do worse than look to the NEA to see bipartisanship in action. Leave it to artists to work together to share vision when possible but to protect moral and artistic individuality when necessary.

But some things can't be compromised, like a real vision or a real principle. The call for bipartisanship is a ruse, a fallback position for Republicans in case they don't win in November. If they do win, you can hold your breath until the whole world runs out of oxygen before President Romney, McCain or Huckabee produce a true coalition government.