The Bipartisan Problem

These days, nobody likes Washington, and everybody agrees that it’s not working. Curiously enough, much of the talk about Washington being broken comes from Washington itself. During the Healthcare Summit, for example, President Barack Obama complained that the healthcare debate became “a very ideological battle… a very partisan battle. And politics I think ended up trumping practical common sense.”
Meanwhile, former Republican presidential nominee and Sen. John McCain frequently complains that “Washington is broken.” But what exactly does that mean? One notices that two distinct arguments are being made. On the one hand, the problem with Washington is the lack of bipartisanship. Washington politicians are hopelessly divided into warring factions and partisan tribes and refuse to collaborate, even with the highest interests of the people being at stake. According to this view, one party wants to see the opposite party fail to pass legislation, no matter how bene%uFB01cial that legislation might ultimately prove to be.
Perversely, this desire for failure occurs even when legislation is bene%uFB01cial to a large number of people, because the votes of these people would then be secured for the opposing party should the legislation pass. However, there also exists another point of view concerning the problem with the government: the idea that the vast majority of politicians belong to a privileged caste, conspiring together (and often with other elites, such as media, academics and businesses) to pass laws that serve them, rather than the people.
The problem with Washington, according to this point of view, is not that it contains too much politics or partisanship, but that it contains too little, as politicians are all too ready to sacri%uFB01ce their principles in order to maintain their Washington relationships. Our own data shows that the American people are deeply con%uFB02icted about what ails Washington and how to cure it. And their understanding of Washington’s problems is, to a signi%uFB01cant extent, in%uFB02uenced by their ideology. In our recent interactive survey of over 2,000 likely voters, 69 percent of voters who describe themselves as progressive and 79 percent of those who describe themselves as liberal think the statement “the problem with Washington is that politicians %uFB01ght too much instead of working towards common goals” best describes their point of view.
On the %uFB02ip side, 65 percent of conservative and 81 percent of very conservative voters think the statement “the problem with Washington is that politicians cozy up to each other rather than stick to their principles” comes closer to their views. We found a similar pattern when we asked our respondents whether the problem with Washington is that “nothing ever gets done” or “that it passes too many bad bills.” Seventy-three percent of progressive voters and 62 percent of liberals believe it’s that ”nothing ever gets done,” while 86 percent of conservative and 92 percent of very conservative adults believe ”that it passes too many bad bills.”
Is the problem with Washington “too much partisan bickering” or is that “people there think they are smarter than the rest of us”? Again, we %uFB01nd a stark ideological polarization. Seventy-four percent of progressive voters and 77 percent of liberals believe there is “too much partisan bickering,” while 87 percent of conservative voters and 95 percent of very conservative voters believe people in Washington “think they are smarter than the rest of us.”
The sudden interest of liberals in bipartisanship while conservatives advocate standing to one’s principles is likely a re%uFB02ection of the fact that Democrats are in power. To liberals, it is the Republican resistance to passing Democratic legislation that is the root of the problem. To conservatives, it’s the fact that Republicans are not resisting the passage of legislation enough. If the balance of power in Washington shifts, we will likely observe quite a different pattern. After all, it was not that long ago that then-Sen. Obama decried reconciliation while Republicans admonished him by saying “elections have consequences.” What we do not expect to change, however, are the attempts by Washington politicians to keep their power by criticizing Washington.John Zogby is president and CEO of the polling %uFB01rm Zogby International. You can post comments on political topics in the Zogby forums at Zogby.com.