Senator Wyden: Bipartisanship Can't be a Death Sentence

In an op-ed in the Washington Post, Senator Ron Wyden laments the difficulty in achieving bipartisan legislation in congress:

The message that many partisan activists want me and my congressional colleagues to take away from this week's primaries and Utah's recent GOP convention is that engaging in bipartisanship is tantamount to surrendering your political party's most-prized principles. In fact, some in my party will undoubtedly criticize me for writing kind words about my friend Sen. Bob Bennett, just as some in Bob's party thought that his working with a Democrat was sufficient grounds for losing his seat in the U.S Senate. In other words, many of the most committed activists believe that the only way for Republicans to win legislatively is for Democrats to lose, and vice versa.

Meanwhile on Capitol Hill, legislating is treated as if there is a giant congressional scoreboard that will ultimately determine which party gets to be in charge. What one side is for legislatively, the other is unalterably against. Many believe that is the only way to achieve clear victory.

While it is certainly true that legislating can be (and is) turned into a zero-sum game, despite what you hear on cable news, not every issue has diametrically opposed Democratic and Republican ideologies. In fact, not only are there policy areas on which Democrats and Republicans agree but when it comes to legislating, many issues present opportunities to build on the best ideas of both parties. No single party has a lock on all the good ideas.

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