This story was reported for the San Diego News Network on February 9, 2010.
President Barack Obama’s call for bipartisanship is getting louder.
Even with a 60-vote supermajority, his promised health care reform package failed to pass last year. Now that the supermajority is gone with the election of Republican Scott Brown as the new U.S. Senator from Massachusetts, Obama’s response is to step up talk of bipartisanship through speeches at public events and press conferences.
Although Obama has always talked about bipartisanship, with an ambitious and incomplete agenda in front of him, he may have to implement it.
But this call to work along bipartisan lines is neither new to Obama nor to recent modern presidents. During his campaign, Obama pledged to work across the aisle, and SDSU political science professor Ronald King noted that most presidents don’t have the luxury of a filibuster-safe Senate. For example, former President George W. Bush lost the majority in 2006 and former President Bill Clinton lost the Democratic supermajority in 1994 in both the House and the Senate.
“There is nothing new here,” King said. “The Republicans are playing party-unity — which in turn challenges the Democrats to be unified in turn, plus to gain a few break-away Republicans. It is the same situation that was faced by all Democratic Presidents since World War II, with the Johnson exception noted.”
Additionally, Obama’s “thinking” isn’t unique from past Democratic presidents. King said he knows that “appealing to the middle and sounding bipartisan is the best way” to complete his agenda.
Rep. Brian Bilbray (R-Calif.) said he has noticed the “majority of Democrats” include Republicans in discussions but the “overall attitude” has been that Republicans are not needed.
With Scott Brown’s victory, Bilbray said, “The attitude will change dramatically and let’s face it — a pothole is not Democratic or Republican but it needs to get solved.”
Bilbray said that though House votes may not change as much as the Senate, including Republicans will now be a “necessity.”
“We’ve got to strike a much more moderate approach to all these issues,” Bilbray said. “Health care has to be toned down and rather than rewarding illegal immigration, we need to get our laws in order. Democrats and Republicans need to be willing to agree on just common sense.”
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Bilbray’s concerns may be addressed, at least when it comes to health care, with Obama’s call to have a televised discussion of the reform package.
In the first major move to jump-start his health care agenda, Obama on Sunday invited GOP and Democratic leaders to discuss possible compromises in a half-day gathering on Feb. 25 that would air live on cable news channels.
It comes amid widespread Republican complaints that Democrats’ efforts so far have been too partisan and secretive.
Obama told CBS’s Katie Couric that he and the leaders of both parties will “go through systematically all the best ideas that are out there and move it forward.”
Asked if he was willing to start from square one, the president said he wants “to look at the Republican ideas that are out there.”
“If we can go step by step through a series of these issues and arrive at some agreements,” Obama said, “then procedurally, there’s no reason why we can’t do it a lot faster than the process took last year.”
But that may not be obtainable, even if Republicans took him up on the offer. King said the problems of party division are structural.
“Unlike in a Parliamentary system, the president is both head of government and head of state,” King said. “As the latter, he represents the country as a whole — which entails the active rhetoric of bipartisanship. As the former, he is responsible for trying to enact and implement a legislative program and maintain popularity.”
And with mid-term elections on the horizon, the effort for bipartisanship may cease to exist completely, King said.
“As the Republicans sense gains in the 2010 mid-term elections, they have every less reason to compromise,” King said. “The bottom line — nothing has changed from normal expectations regarding U.S. politics. Congress will not be bipartisan except for either trivial or feel-good issues and Obama will continue to speak the rhetoric of bipartisanship.”
Associated Press writer Charles Babington contributed to this report. Hoa Quach is the political editor for the San Diego News Network.