Ron Wyden’s op-ed about Senator Bob Bennett’s late career gets too treacly about bipartisanship for my taste, but it does feature the critical observation that “[w]hile it is certainly true that legislating can be (and is) turned into a zero-sum game, despite what you hear on cable news, not every issue has diametrically opposed Democratic and Republican ideologies.”
It’s always very important to understand which things in life are zero-sum and which aren’t. Politics contains examples of both. Competition for office is zero-sum. If I’m winning, you’re losing. Passing a health care bill either benefits Democrats electorally or else it benefits Republicans electorally. But public policy isn’t zero-sum and consequently compromise doesn’t need to be difference-splitting. But the more members of congress see themselves as engaged in electoral competition between the parties rather than legislative collaboration with their fellow members, the more impossible it becomes to ever reach compromise. Which I don’t particularly think is a problem, except that our political system in most cases requires some measure of bipartisanship for a bill to pass.
On this front, something has to give. Either members of congress (especially in the Senate) need to start caring less about the overall partisan balance of power or else institutions need to change to leave the majority with a freer hand to govern.