Obama's Gandhian, Christ-ian Hardball Bipartisanship

The coverage of Obama's "failure" to achieve bipartisanship has been mostly naïve. The press has largely looked at it like a high school prom: if you ask out a girl and she says no, it's the asker, not the askee, who is humiliated. He had a goal; he didn't meet it; therefore, he failed.

But there are other reasons for bipartisanship.

Sometimes, a leader actually wants to take adopt a policy -- for substantive or political reasons -- that is more popular with the opposition than with allies. Sometimes they secretly believe that the opposition is actually right about some things. "Bipartisanship" enables you to do what you want to do anyway but say to your own supporters, "hey, I needed to be bipartisan." I suspect that Obama's tax cuts, unpopular with the left, fell into this category. Remember, Obama proposed a massive middle class tax cut during the campaign. He had to, and wanted to, deliver a tax cut. Why not therefore make it seem like a give?

In addition, if you reach out to the other side and they reject you, it's THEY who look bad, not you. Hendrick Hertzberg of The New Yorker put this in a very interesting historical and religious context:

"Fifty years ago, the civil-rights movement understood that nonviolence can be an effective weapon even if - or especially if - the other side refuses to follow suit. Obama has a similarly tough-minded understanding of the political uses of bipartisanship, which, even if it fails as a tactic for compromise, can succeed as a tonal strategy: once the other side makes itself appear intransigently, destructively partisan, the game is half won. Obama is learning to throw the ball harder. But it's not Rovian hardball he's playing. More like Gandhian hardball."

Or, since Gandhi was profoundly influenced by Jesus, we might say Obama is practicing Christ-ian hardball.