Obama’s fake bipartisanship

I wasn’t a big fan of bipartisanship when George W. Bush was president. Some of the best things he did as president were totally partisan, like his SCOTUS appointments and tax cuts. I also don’t remember my liberal friends complaining when their paychecks were a little fatter after the tax cuts. I do recall them complaining about No Child Left Behind and the cost of the Medicare drug benefit – both of which were bipartisan bills. If President Obama has his way the costs of the Medicare drug benefit will look like pocket change. Will my liberal friends complain?

William McGurn, writing in the Wall Street Journal, pointed out how President Obama and his mouthpieces have re-defined bipartisanship and how the media is letting them get away with it.

The redefinition started during the stimulus debate, but it really picked up steam late last month with David Axelrod’s appearance on ABC’s “This Week.” There the president’s chief strategist explained that a bill didn’t need Republican votes to be “bipartisan”; it was enough if Republican “ideas” were included. A few days earlier, Rahm Emanuel had offered reporters another redefinition, suggesting that a bill was bipartisan if people merely “saw the president trying” to get Republicans on board.

The president himself endorsed this redefinition during Rose Garden remarks delivered after a Senate committee passed a health-care bill on a strictly party-line vote. Perhaps only someone who truly embraces “the audacity of hope” could see healthy bipartisanship at work in the complete lack of GOP votes. Here’s how he put it: “It’s a plan that was debated for more than 50 hours and that, by the way, includes 160 Republican amendments—a hopeful sign of bipartisan support for the final product.”

Let’s leave aside specific complaints from Republicans, who note that the “Republican” amendments the president cited are mostly technical in nature. The larger point is that the White House’s new definitions of bipartisanship are just like the fake “jobs saved or created” numbers Mr. Obama used to justify the stimulus at a time when the economy was in fact shedding tens of thousands of jobs. And the press should call him on it.

Honest reporting would seem especially important at a time when the future of a large and vital segment of the American economy is at stake. In addition to higher costs, other Republican objections to the president’s health-care proposal include the establishment of a government-run insurance plan that will compete with private insurers—and the refusal to equalize the tax treatment between individually purchased and employer-provided health insurance. In all these areas, the president has shown no interest in compromise.

I hope he keeps up his partisanship and lack of compromise. He’s hurting members of his own party who will hopefully stand in the way of him destroying our health care industry. And as long as he remains so inflexible conservatives and republicans won’t be blamed when reality smacks the American people in the face. When that happens Dear Leader will be wishing for the slipping poll numbers he enjoys today.