- It's time to start telling the truth about how John McCain's alleged bipartisanship helps Bush.
...Back when I worked in the Senate, which sometimes seems as distant as the era of Clay, Webster, and Calhoun, there were always multiple senators and representatives who were likely to be involved in any bipartisan deal...
...Because there were enough such wheeler-dealers among Republicans, they formed shifting alliances, and no individual senator could consistently make or break the deal.
But those Republicans either retired or, like Domenici, have elected to play a reliably partisan role. That left McCain alone as the broker of bipartisanship. And it’s a role he has guarded jealously. Recall McCain’s recent slashing attack on Barack Obama as “partisan” for choosing to pursue ethics reform through the regular committee process in the Senate rather than an ad hoc task force created by McCain. He couldn’t stomach someone pursuing a bipartisan deal that wasn’t his own.
McCain’s monopoly on bipartisanship, and the one-party rule that prevails otherwise, have been mutually interdependent phenomena. If actual opportunities for bipartisanship were not so limited, McCain would have much less power. At the same time, McCain provides a kind of safety valve for the natural pressures that would resist one-party control, letting out just enough pressure so that a political arrangement that perpetually seems unsustainable manages to hold on.
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