The notion of closed-door bipartisan deals belongs to a bygone era. The bipartisan myth

Every time there is divided government in Washington, there is a revival — among elite journalists, think tank commentators and respectable politicians of all stripes — of a cherished idea about how business should get done in the nation’s capital:

Get the most responsible adults of both parties in one room, shoo away the cameras and microphones, and don’t let the two sides come out until they have cut a deal on the most pressing problem of the day.


Call it the Split the Difference Scenario — a dream of Washington at its civic-minded best that has flourished for decades, even as the reality of Washington became ever more snarling and contentious.

Sometimes, the dream even came true, in iconic closed-door moments: a bipartisan bargain over Social Security in 1983, a high-drama budget summit at Andrews Air Force Base in 1990, a landmark spending accord between Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich in 1997.

The striking fact about Washington at the start of 2012 is how many people, in public and private, say they have concluded that the capital is no longer a city of splittable differences.

This sullen judgment is by all evidence driving the political strategy of President Barack Obama, formerly an apostle of a grand bargain to solve the country’s fiscal problems.

He’s being joined by a critical mass of Washington influentials — witnessing the inability of the two parties to find common ground on the budget in 2011 — who are ready to discard the old ideal: Politicians huddling behind closed doors to cut deals is no longer viewed as necessarily even a desirable scenario, much less a plausible one.

“This election is built to have a fight,” Rep. Kevin McCarthy, a California Republican and the House majority whip, told POLITICO. “If you watch from the rise of the tea party [on the right] to the rise of the Occupiers [on the left]—in ’08, our country said they wanted a little more government. In 2010, they said, ‘Whoa, that was too much.’ I think 2012 is going to be the argument for the size and scope of what they want America to be, and that is healthy. We should have the debate of what we want this country to look like.”

The correct response to Washington gridlock, by this reckoning, is not private deal-making but a public clash over core beliefs. Most Republicans don’t believe in raising taxes and would rather fight than split the difference. Most Democrats don’t believe benefits like Medicare should be cut or turned over to the states and are more than ready to take the argument to voters.

Neera Tanden, an influential Democrat who heads the liberal Center for American Progress, echoed McCarthy. “Two different elections point in two different ways, and both sides are arguing over fundamental principles,” she said.

Tanden argues that much of the commentary about Washington incorrectly supposes that it is petty obstacles — political posturing or the tactics of special interest groups — that prevent a return to grand bargains of the Andrews Air Force Base variety. “The debate has become so shrill and partisan people just assume it’s ridiculous,” she said, when the argument is actually over basic questions that may get resolved only when the electorate decides in an emphatic way which side is right.

This analysis is shared by Rahm Emanuel, a veteran of Washington and Obama’s West Wing and now the mayor of Chicago.

“We need to take on the mythology that divided government produces progress,” Emanuel said. “Divided government produces divided government.”

The notion of closed-door bipartisan deals, he said, belongs to a bygone era: “Events have moved on. What the markets want, and what the world wants, is decisive action. That comes with single-party governance.”

This scenario is in fact what Washington produced twice over the past decade. In the first part of President George W. Bush’s term, Republican dominance produced major tax cuts. In the first part of Obama’s term, Democratic dominance produced the largest overhaul of the nation’s health care system in decades. Neither event was the result of a closed-door bargaining session of the sort many Washington elites hold dear.

If the Split the Difference Scenario has been exposed as a myth, perhaps no person has been more shaken by the discovery than Obama. He now believes, according to advisers and others familiar with his thinking, that there is scant opportunity for any kind of Washington grand bargain until 2013 — and perhaps not then, unless the results of the November election leave one party clearly empowered and the other so chastened it is ready to deal.

This conclusion represents a painful falling to earth. Obama’s 2008 message was built on the idea that Washington governance had become irrational — distorted by the mad dash of politicians for publicity and momentary tactical advantage — and that his brand of cool rationality could bridge divides and restore order.

The blame over why this didn’t happen seemingly began within hours of his inauguration — Republicans spurned his overtures, or his own agenda was called too radical and divisive. But it wasn’t until 2011 that the basic premise of Obama’s vision of Washington compromise collapsed.

House Speaker John Boehner’s support for the ideal of Washington difference-splitting probably would match Obama’s, if he were left to his own devices. But he did not have support from his own GOP caucus to negotiate on the issue most important to Obama, raising taxes in tandem with spending cuts. In the meantime, there were other valiant efforts to revive the old era of closed-door deal-making. The congressional supercommittee could not reach accord. A budget plan by two longtime Washington worthies, Democrat Erskine Bowles and Republican Alan Simpson, was unveiled to widespread editorial-page and think-tank praise — and was promptly snubbed by actual politicians. The Senate Gang of Six, devoted to finding bipartisan budget solutions, managed to make progress in closed-door talks — until the very moment when partisans not in the talks got wind of specifics on raising revenue or cutting treasured entitlement programs.

This record of frustration is reflected in Obama’s rhetoric.

Last July, in a televised address to the nation, he was still fully committed to the idea that there was a grand bargain to be struck with Republicans on the budget. He noted that he was pushing Democrats to make it happen: “While many in my own party aren’t happy with the painful cuts it makes, enough will be willing to accept them if the burden is fairly shared. While Republicans might like to see deeper cuts and no revenue at all, there are many in the Senate who have said, ‘Yes, I’m willing to put politics aside and consider this approach because I care about solving the problem.’”

He said voters are “fed up with a town where compromise has become a dirty word,” and concluded, “The American people may have voted for divided government, but they didn’t vote for a dysfunctional government.”

A half-year later, Obama’s speeches still give a nod to the idea that bipartisan progress would be desirable if possible — but they often reveal his clear belief that this is no longer likely. Speaking to the House Democratic Issues Conference last week, Obama said of Republicans: “Where they obstruct, where they’re unwilling to act, where they’re more interested in party than they are in country, more interested in the next election than the next generation, then we’ve got to call them out on it.”

If many Washington politicians have given up on the idea of grand bargains built on both sides giving a little, it is clear many voters still believe this should be the goal. A Pew survey earlier this month found that 58 percent of respondents believe Republican leaders should work with Obama to get things done, “even if it means disappointing some groups of Republican supporters.” A CBS/New York Times poll this month made a similar point even more starkly: 85 percent said that “Democrats and Republicans should compromise some of their positions in order to get things done.”

As the dream of Washington deal-making has faded in recent months, some academic observers believe there is a more structural explanation than simply a looming election campaign.

Keith T. Poole, a University of Georgia political scientist who studies congressional voting patterns, said that although there were grand bargains during the administrations of Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush, the trend has been moving away from major legislative agreements since Ronald Reagan used a bloc of moderate Democrats and Republicans to strike landmark deals in the early 1980s. George W. Bush and Barack Obama have had a relative handful of centrists to help move their agendas in bipartisan fashion.

“Steadily the moderates have all disappeared,” Poole said. “The moderate Southern Democrats were replaced by Republicans and then, one by one, the moderate Republicans were replaced either by Democrats or conservative Republicans.”

Poole and research partner Howard Rosenthal of New York University have written that Republicans have become more conservative faster than Democrats have become more liberal.

“The Republican Party has been steadily moving to the right since the 1970s,” Poole said. “The Republicans have moved about three times the speed to the right as the Democrats have moved to the left.”

This conclusion about the inexorable pace of polarization will disappoint many centrist voters, on whom elections hinge — a fact that is producing its own round of partisan blame-casting.

Emanuel said Democrats are naïve if they are waiting for “the inner Bob Dole to come out” among today’s Republicans, ready to make a deal. Instead, “any person who reaches out and tries to work with the president is going to get [challenged in] a primary.”

“It’s just a widening, a rift, between us,” in the two major parties, said Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), a member of the Senate Gang of Six, “and that makes it very difficult to get back to those glory days with Tip O’Neill and Ronald Reagan” able to steer a compromise on Social Security.

Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), who was a member of the failed budget supercommittee, told POLITICO that, “I think there is a deal to be cut that the American people would perceive as very fair and very balanced,” with a mix of tax increases and spending cuts. But, he said, as a practical matter, Obama realizes from “bitter experience … that that’s not going to be possible” because of GOP opposition.

Rep. Jeb Hensarling, a Texas Republican appearing last week on the same POLITICO panel with Van Hollen, countered that Obama’s tax proposal of increasing taxes on families making more than $250,000 reflects a strategy of “division” of the electorate. “Any time you hear Washington say, ‘We’re going to tax the rich,’ that’s when middle-income people have to watch their wallets.”

Rep. George Miller, a veteran California Democrat, said the two parties are talking past one another more than when he first won election to the House in 1974. This, he said, makes closed-door deal-making much harder: “People went into a room to get the best deal they could get, but to get a deal. You don’t have that anymore now.”

Rep. Tom Price (R-Ga.) agreed that grand bargains are getting harder — but said the effort must still be made. “It’s a process that has to occur and we haven’t gotten through that process,” Price said. “Hopefully, at some point people say, ‘Look, we’ve got to get the work of the country done, find that common ground and move forward in a positive way.’ But I don’t belittle or minimize the challenge. It’s huge.”

Zachary Abrahamson and Carrie Budoff Brown contributed to this report.