When Bipartisanship Should Not Be the Goal

Unlike the Bush administration — which used a slim election victory to claim a broad policy mandate — the Obama White House has bent over backwards to include minority-party Republicans in the discussions over health care reform this year. The aim, Democrats say, is to get a bill that both parties can agree on.

Yet today, Washington Post op-ed columnist E.J. Dionne Jr. makes a good case for why bipartisanship on health care policy should hardly be a goal of the Democratic leaders crafting the legislation. “[T]here should be no illusions,” Dionne writes. “On health care, the two parties are far apart on the fundamentals.”

Most Democrats believe that fixing the system will require increased government intervention to guarantee universal coverage and to contain costs. Most Republicans oppose an expansion of government’s role and believe an even more market-oriented system would pave the way to health-care nirvana.

Trying to achieve full bipartisanship by squaring those two views is a recipe for incoherence.

Indeed, when GOP leaders — from Sens. Charles Grassley (Iowa) to Michael Enzi (Wy.) to Mitch McConnell (Ky.) to Judd Gregg (N.H.) — call simultaneously for a bipartisan bill and reject inclusion of a public plan, it’s really just a roundabout way of insisting that the Democrats’ bill exclude such an option.

Not that bipartisanship isn’t a noble goal. But there are about 46 million uninsured folks in this country who would surely trade that nobility for health care coverage –  McConnell’s happiness notwithstanding. Indeed, doing precisely the things that would make McConnell unhappy was the reason President Obama was elected to begin with.