Author Archives: Tin Man

Bipartisan

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I’m so tired of all the talk about “bipartisanship.”

“If there is any chance we can do a bipartisan bill, it has to be in the Finance Committee,” Harry Reid said yesterday about health care reform.

Currently the Senate has 59 Democrats, 40 Republicans, and a vacancy in Minnesota.

If the Senate had 51 Democrats and 48 Republicans, and 8 Republicans joined 51 Democrats to pass a bill by a vote of 59-40, everyone would gush about how wonderful it was that a bipartisan bill passed.

But the Senate has 59 Democrats and 40 Republicans. If all Democrats vote for a bill today and all Republicans vote against it, it still passes, 59-40. But in that situation, it’s not “bipartisan.” So it’s a very bad thing.

Why is the same vote acceptable in one context but not in another?

If there were 90 Democrats and 10 Republicans, Harry Reid and others would still be fretting about winning over one or two of those Republicans in the name of “bipartisanship.”

Enough with the fetishizing of bipartisanship. If spineless centrists are going to worry about winning over members of the opposition no matter how small that opposition is, then what is the point of having a 59- or 60-member Democratic Senate caucus instead of a 51-member caucus or 54-member caucus? Yes, it’s nice to be able to break filibusters. But Congress recently decided that health reform could pass by a simple majority vote if necessary. So why are Reid and others being so obsessive about “bipartisanship”?

The Senate is an exclusive club divided into two teams. There’s a Democratic caucus and a Republican caucus, a Democratic leader and a Republican leader. Members of each party have their own retreats. Party controls everything. Most Americans aren’t loyal to one party or another — they vote for whoever seems like the better choice in any given year — but senators are obsessed with party. That’s especially true today, when party loyalty is much stronger than it used to be. Only three Republicans broke ranks to vote for Obama’s stimulus bill — and one of them switched parties soon after.

The bipartisanship fetishists in the Senate and the media are making an important mistake: they’re confusing bipartisanship with consensus.

We emerged from the 2008 elections with a Senate containing 59 — and it really should be 60 — Democrats. The Republican Party currently has a 25 percent approval rating. So the consensus of the American people is that the Republicans suck.

The consensus is that the Democrats should use their 60-member caucus to pass health care reform. Nearly three-quarters of Americans think there should be a public health care plan; this is a consensus. But “Democrats in the Senate have considered nixing the proposal in order to win Republican support for the bill,” according to that link.

Politicians do not have to listen blindly to what majorities want — people can be ill-informed and majorities can be wrong — but if they’re going to buck the public, they should do so for substantive reasons, not because they’re worried about upsetting the guy who jogs next to them in the Senate gym or sits next to them in the Senate dining room.

Bipartisanship is meaningless. It’s as antidemocratic as the Senate itself. In the Senate, every state gets two seats, no matter how big the state’s population; likewise, each of the two major parties apparently gets a voice, even if the American people think one of those parties is intellectually bankrupt.

Exactly how big a majority do we need before we can start using it?

Commas and Salt

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“This is a comma…. Learn what it does. You can’t just sprinkle them on your prose like salt.”

A-fucking-men. As an editor, I love that.

Of course, the other offenders are those who don’t use any commas at all.

(From here.)

Dissertation

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I’ve been thinking lately that I would really enjoy writing a dissertation. Several times in the last few years I’ve considered going to grad school for a history Ph.D. I really love American history, and I wish I could do something with that interest. I don’t know that grad school will ever happen, because, what would I do with the degree? Even if I wanted to teach, which I’m not sure I would, the job market for academics is horrible. And going back to school would cost money — as it is, I’m still paying off law school loans — and I would give up the yearly salary I get from having a job.

I suppose writing a dissertation without going to grad school is really just writing a book. And I would love to write a book about some topic in American history or politics. But I have no idea how to do this sort of thing — how to do research, how to structure it, what sources to use. I get the impression that in grad school, you learn how to do historical research and how to evaluate sources, and you have an adviser and a peer community to help you structure your work.

What’s triggering this in me right now is that I’m reading Nixon’s Shadow, by David Greenberg. It’s an examination of how Richard Nixon has been perceived by various groups over the years: as a populist (by California conservatives), as a criminal (by the New Left), as a victim (by 70s conservatives), as a statesman (by the foreign policy establishment), as a nutcase (by psychohistorians), and so on. The book was originally published as Greenberg’s dissertation for his Ph.D. at Columbia a few years ago, and as I’ve been reading it, I’ve been thinking, I would love to write a book like this.

It just seems like it would be easier to do it if I knew how the hell to go about it. And it seems like you learn how to do that in grad school, with the education and the support system you get. Maybe I’m wrong?

Sometimes I think about the roads not taken. I’m not necessarily too old for a Ph.D. — if I started in the next couple of years, I’d finish in my 40s — but I don’t know if a university would want to hire a new professor in his 40s — but maybe I’m wrong — and again, I don’t really know if I would want to teach.

I need to find someone to talk to about all this…