Memo To Bloomberg And Company: The Way To Reduce "Partisan Gridlock" Is To Further Weaken The GOP.
December 31, 2007 -- 10:17 AM EST // //

By now, you've probably heard that Michael Bloomberg and a bunch of retired politicians are going to hold a summit at the University of Oklahoma this week to talk about how desperately the nation needs a nonpartisan and independent leader like, you know, him to come in and lead the nation out of partisan gridlock.

This story, fittingly, was first leaked to The Washington Post's David Broder, a St. Paul-like figure who has long preached the virtues of the Beltway Gospel of Bipartisanship high and low across the land. Predictably, this planned gathering is already garnering the sort of awed and respectful coverage that greeted the formation of the bipartisan Iraq Study Group nearly two years ago.

So here's the question: When these bearded elders descend on Oklahoma later this week, will anyone ask them what policies they stand for, beyond "breaking partisan gridlock"? Will anyone ask them where they stand on the issues? Will anyone ask why we're supposed to believe that their actual stances have any chance of creating "bipartisan unity" at all?

These questions are kind of relevant. Partisan gridlock happens because people -- and by extension, political parties -- disagree about stuff. One party wants to do one thing on a particular issue. Another party says No. The first party offers a few concessions. The second party still says No. That's where "partisan gridlock" comes from -- underlying disagreement on issues -- and in our current case, the fault for our "partisan gridlock" isn't equally distributed between the two parties. Rather, it's almost exclusively the fault of the Republicans.

You aren't allowed to say this, but it's true. If you don't believe me, ask the bipartisan Iraq Study Group. They proposed a bunch of solutions to Iraq. The Democrats largely embraced these solutions. The Republicans, by contrast, didn't. As a result, the ISG's proposals didn't happen -- even though they had been authored by a distinguished bipartisan panel. The Republicans have been the near-exclusive cause of gridlock on multiple other issues, too -- issues upon which there is already majority agreement on how to proceed. In reality, the best way to end partisan gridlock is to further weaken the Republican Party, which is tying government in knots and preventing it from carrying out the will of the majority on a host of fronts.

Holding out the promise of bipartisan unity without saying why it is that your stances on issues will do anything at all to create that unity -- as Bloomberg and friends are doing here -- is just a sucker's game designed to get these folks the sort of fawning attention that they're already getting. One hopes that the press will start asking these worthies some tough questions about where they stand on stuff and why we should be listening to them.

Update: Glenn Greenwald has the definitive take-down.

Update II: Speaking of David Broder, The Washington Post has released some new info that suggests that Dan Froomkin's aggressive anti-Bush polemics are far more popular with readers than is Broder's mushy centrism.

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