Harvard College Democrats

I’m all for bipartisanship, but…

Posted 6/24/08 by Eva Lam

The other day, my daily half-hour of The Simpsons was rudely interrupted by this rather incongruous advertisement:


Aside from the awkward non-transition between the first seven seconds of fast-paced traffic-sounding music and the more conventional Soothing Narrator Lady voice that constitutes the rest of the ad, and the fact that the spot rapidly degenerates into Soothing Narrator Lady just soothingly stating random words (“Reform! Prosperity! Peace!”) while John McCain stares off into the wilderness, chest pockets a-flapping, something else caught me about this ad: the fact that its main selling point was that the featured candidate “stood up to the President” on the issue of global warming. This would be, of course, the incumbent president, who just so happens to be a member of John McCain’s party. I’m frankly reassured to see that the McCain campaign is not so terribly isolated that they forget George Bush’s abysmal popularity ratings, but couldn’t they find a way of expressing McCain’s stance on global warming without making things so… awkward? To me, it seems like the McCain folks are tripping over themselves in the race for the Holy Grail of Maverick Status – yet another reflection of the (I think) misguided embrace of bipartisanship for bipartisanship’s sake.

This phenomenon, of course, is hardly isolated to the McCain campaign; candidates for local and statewide offices – particularly Republicans in blue states, and probably Democrats in red states (happily, I don’t yet live in a red state, so I can’t confirm the latter assertion) – also love to have bipartisan bona fides. Oregon Republican senator Gordon Smith, for instance, in the face of mediocre approval ratings, seems to be trying to soften his Republican identity in the same media market where Barack Obama just drew 72,000 people to a rally; in the one week I spent occasionally watching local TV in Portland earlier this month, I saw repeated Smith ads touting his bipartisan credentials, particularly on the environment.

Now, Smith seems to have taken that bipartisanship to the next level: The Caucus reports that Smith is touting the fact that Barack Obama’s website gives Smith a shout-out for working with Obama to raise fuel efficiency standards in this ad:

The Obama campaign, of course, was quick to point out that Obama supports Jeff Merkley, the actual Democrat in the race. (A quick aside: I know nothing about the Oregon Democratic primary and have no particular opinions, except that Steve Novick, the man whom Merkley beat out in the primary, had some very clever ads, poking fun at the fact that he’s only 4’9″ and has a hook for a left hand.)

Don’t get me wrong – my political ideology doesn’t endorse fighting with Republicans just for the sake of fighting. There are times when individuals on the opposite side of the aisle are, believe it or not, right – and while I am quite firm in my Democratic convictions, I am not so blindly loyal to my party as to believe that we shouldn’t work with Republicans when doing so is the best way to bring about the policies that are best for the country. But this form of productive bipartisanship seems to have been distilled down by a number of moderate Republicans (or Republicans masquerading as moderates) to the type of sentiment we see in these ads – that because Gordon Smith, or John McCain, or Willy Wonka, works with Democrats, you should vote for him! I have a better solution: if I’m supposed to vote for John McCain because of the instances in which he resembles a Democrat, then why wouldn’t I just vote for the Democrat? Seems a lot simpler to me.