The need for bipartisanship

It has by now become cliche for gussied-up experts with book deals, PhDs and expensive haircuts to appear on cable news and denounce the current state of American politics. One notion in particular that is apt to appear on a slow news day is that America needs more bipartisanship.

Not that we ever get it. Red voters continue to vote red and blues blue; the politicians continue to argue themselves into a legislative gridlock; extremists and ideologues alone continue to blather at the cameras and microphones on every frequency and every station. Bipartisanship, to the politically savvy American, is nothing but a myth, Washington’s big lie, the promise politicians make to get reelected.

This is all true. But at the center of the truism is an urgent truth: Bipartisanship is not only something that would be nice, it is essential to the integrity of our political system. Without it, that system will collapse — and whether or not it does is as much up to us here at Princeton as it is to Washington.

Too apocalyptic, you say? Perhaps, but not without reason. The proof lies in the pages of history.

There is a rather curious letter dated “27 June 1786” from John Jay to George Washington. It’s not a letter that appears in many history books, and that likely has something to do with its despairing tone. Under the Articles of Confederation, the ineffectual and polarized government of the nascent United States had ground to a shrieking halt. Jay writes:

“There doubtless is much reason to think and to say, that we are wofully, and, in many instances wickedly, misled. Private rage for property suppresses public considerations; and personal, rather than national interests, have become the great objects of attention. Representative bodies will ever be faithful copies of their originals, and generally exhibit a checkered assemblage of virtue and vice, of abilities and weakness. The mass of men are neither wise nor good.”

Jay describes his “greatest fear” as being that the economic and political crisis would cause “the better kind of people” — those of means and power — to “be led ... to consider the charms of liberty [read: democracy] as imaginary and delusive.” That, in other words, there would be another revolution — one led by an aristocratic class considerably less fond of democracy than he. It was only by establishing another civic system with elements expressly designed to encourage compromise and pragmatism that the Founders were able to prevent exactly this from happening. That civic system, warts and all, is that flawed gem we call the Constitution.

Real bipartisanship is not the fairy-tale nonsense they sell us on cable news; it is the glue that holds the fabric of our society together. It does not consist of politicians singing “Kumbaya” around a campfire; in fact, when it has worked, bipartisanship has often gone hand-in-hand with the slimy, dirty “Washington politicking” that everyone loves to hate. One need only look at the dizzying combination of popular agitation, backroom dealing and seedy political motives that went into the negotiation and eventual bipartisan passing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The debate was ugly, and many of its participants on the Hill were even uglier — some historians have argued that the only party with pure motivations was the brave protestors and Freedom Riders whose fates were being decided. Yet no one (with the possible exception of Rand Paul) would argue that the end product wasn’t one of the landmark achievements of American legislation.

This is a system we should not squander. We cannot stand idly by while our politicians paralyze our legislature and engage in meaningless battles with no hope or even desire for resolution. We, as a nation, should not settle for the Squabble of the Week. We can and must demand more. If our politicians are unable to do what they’ve been elected to do, we must force their hands.

We must change ourselves, too, and fundamentally. There is nothing more corrosive to the democratic system than an uninformed voting public, and even here at Princeton I have seen people with pretensions to political knowledge who, when prompted, can do little more than regurgitate the party lines spelled out in colorful bullet points on the Republican and Democratic websites. We can do better. These times demand more than a quick skim of the blogosphere every morning before class. Every one of us must be able to think independently and critically, understand both sides of a position and try to arrive at practical solutions together rather than let our differences keep us perennially yelling at each other. After all, if the students at one of the leading research institutions in this country can’t sort out their politics, how can we expect anyone else to? We set the example for our politicians — it is, after all, our votes that they desperately pander for.

And always we must keep Jay’s warning in the back of our mind, for democracy is a precious and fragile thing to waste, its enemies numerous and exceedingly patient.

John Colon is a freshman from Wayside, N.J. He can be reached at jmcolon@princeton.edu.