Bipartisanship
Let me now don the cap of Obama fanboy and quote this Nate Silver piece on Bipartisanship:
Obama’s rhetoric about “bipartisanship” was […], on the one hand, a politically helpful extension of Obama’s 2004 DNC keynote speech, which was the only thing that most voters knew him by early in the primary campaign. On the other hand, it was a polite way to draw a contrast with Hillary Clinton, who’s core weakness may have been a perception that she would be a polarizing political actor.
[…] John McCain, who himself had a strong reputation for bipartisanship, became the Republican nominee. “Bipartisanship”, therefore, became less important as a differentiator for Obama[…]
[T]he economic collapse that accelerated throughout 2008 and particularly in September and October of last year. Once the economy fell apart, people weren’t so concerned about abstractions like bipartisanship — they simply wanted the problems solved.
More essentially, however, bipartisanship, as Obama intended the term, should not necessarily be confused for “compromise”. Rather, it implied behaving in good-faith — hearing out opinions from different sides of the aisle and identifying the best ideas regardless of their partisan origin. Bipartisanship, to Obama, was a process rather than an outcome. He could plausibly have been acting in a bipartisan manner, even if he hadn’t gotten many Republicans to go along with his agenda.
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