I believe on a lot of issues we can find common ground.
I do believe we have an opportunity to find some common ground.
I believe we can find some common ground with the Democrats.
—President George W. Bush answering questions at a press conference the day following the 2006 election
Extending the hand of partnership to the president—not partisanship, but partnership…[I] say let’s work together to come to some common ground where we can solve the problem in Iraq.
—Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), November 8, 2006
Now let’s work and find the common ground, move forward with the kind of policy that makes sense for this country’s small businesses, working families, and we all win in the process.
—Senator-Elect Jon Tester (D-MT)
Yes, we have differences, but we are not divided. We address the issues, but we don’t attack each other. We fight over our causes, but in the end we find common ground.
—Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger (R-CA)
WHEN WE STARTED OUR “COMMON GROUND” COLUMNS FOR USA Today in May 2005, those two words were rarely heard in political circles. By fall 2005, the occasional “common ground” began appearing in the press and sporadically in political speeches. But as the 2006 midterm election drew closer, the term became a staple in campaign rhetoric across the country. After Labor Day—when politicians and the public traditionally pay the most attention to campaigns—“common ground” spread like the common cold in a third-grade classroom.
From political debates to campaign ads, from the blogosphere to the op-ed pages, everyone seemed to be talking about seeking “common ground.” Following the election, politicians were tripping over one another to declare the results a clarion call for bipartisanship. The quotes at the beginning of this chapter are all public statements recorded the day after the 2006 midterm election when voters put Democrats in control of the House and Senate, ending the Republicans’ twelve years in the majority.
At the beginning of 2006, few predicted the election would so dramatically alter the political landscape. Republicans expected to lose seats in the House and Senate, but they were not prepared to lose the majority in one, much less both. They believed they were invincible.
Incumbents have good reason to feel that way. Incumbents are provided free mail, video conferencing, and unlimited e-mail accounts, allowing them to keep their names constantly before the voters. Election years add thousands of miles to an incumbent’s frequent flyer account as the pace of trips home increases exponentially during the campaign season. Incumbency also gives them a huge fund-raising advantage, as lobbyists line up, checks in hand, to pay homage to the “masters of the Hill.”
Then there was the issue of redistricting. After the 2000 census, congressional district lines were redrawn to make incumbents safer than they had ever been; more than 95 percent of all incumbents were reelected in 2002 and 2004. In 2006, despite poll numbers that showed public approval of Congress at record lows, Republicans remained confident of maintaining their majority, if for no other reason than their safe gerrymandered districts. Confidence turned to concern as the election approached.
With each campaign trip home, incumbents found an increasingly angry electorate. Like most political observers, incumbents attributed voter anger to the war in Iraq, or President Bush’s job ratings, or scandals, or Congress’s failure to deal with virtually anything. They were also getting an earful about the polarizing climate in Washington. All but the most partisan voters hated it. Still, incumbents had been through elections with angry voters before, and they believed that tenure and experience would help them survive.
Republicans avoided talking about President Bush, while Democrats never stopped talking about him. Incumbents told voters about the spoils they sent home, while challengers talked about what was spoiled in Washington. Even the most strident supporters of the war in Iraq began to talk about reassessing the mission. It became popular, even among some Republicans, to call for Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s resignation. (Rumsfeld was fired the day after the election.) Scandals were attributed to a few bad apples. Each party blamed the other for lack of progress on important issues. However, the public wasn’t buying any of it.
Incumbents deluded themselves by looking to the 2002 midterm election, when voters were still in an angry mood after 9/11 yet Republicans still gained seats in both houses of Congress. But even the most optimistic recognized that the voters were fed up with the polarizing climate that enveloped Washington. In response, they simply blamed the other side for the bitterness. This time it didn’t work. The lack of progress in Iraq and polarized inaction on virtually anything, coupled with Republican scandals, was just too much baggage.
In the end, it was obvious that Republicans had been in denial. They never seemed to grasp the depth of voter anger. A poll released shortly before the 2006 election confirmed that voters were not only reacting to a list of issues, but were questioning the entire political structure. A poll of 1,021 voters in October by Opinion Research Corporation for CNN found that an astounding 78 percent of the electorate believed “Our system of government is broken.”
The politicians had been right about one thing: voters did want to see a change in direction. However, the voters decided to change policy makers, along with policy. They concluded that the government they had was not the government they needed. Voters sensed, correctly, that the polarized climate in Washington was less about issue differences between the parties and more about holding on to political power.
This doesn’t mean issues weren’t polarized in the 2006 election. Clearly, they were. The war in Iraq was polarized with the choice of either “staying the course” or “cutting and running.” Stem-cell research was polarized. One side argued for doing anything to cure diseases; the other declared, “Not if it means killing unborn babies.” Immigration reform was polarized. One side said allowing illegals to stay meant granting them amnesty and “tolerating lawbreaking”; the other said deporting them was xenophobic, heartless, and racist.
The last Congress was so polarized that over two years it was in legislative session fewer than 250 days. The fewest days in session in fifty years, according to Thomas Mann, a congressional scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. Major changes in immigration reform, restructuring Social Security, rewriting the tax code, easing the cost of health care, ethics reform, and an increase in the minimum wage—all bogged down. Only three of eleven appropriations bills to fund the government for 2006–2007 had been approved by the time of the election.
After 9/11, President Bush’s message to world leaders was “You are either with us or against us,” but he turned that into a frontal polarizing attack on Democrats who opposed his policies in Iraq. Some Democrats responded by calling Bush “incompetent,” “a fool,” and “a liar.” Polarization, already bad, got uglier in 2006. As the election neared, incumbents decrying polarization looked increasingly disingenuous.
The voters’ anger wasn’t solely focused on the polarization between the parties. They were also angry about what polarization was doing to the relationship between politicians and the voters. In an earlier chapter, we quoted economist Robert Samuelson, who got the villain right: “The real polarization in American politics is not between the politicians themselves; it is the polarization between the politicians and the rest of us.” Our system of government calls for those who govern to govern with the consent of the governed. This time, the voters withdrew their consent.
The voter rebellion in 2006 was reminiscent of the elections of 1980 and 1994. The issues were different in the three elections, but there were many similarities. All three changed the political landscape dramatically. All were dominated by unpopular presidents. All three took place when one party controlled Congress and the White House. All three elections resulted in divided government, and after each, politicians responded with a call for common ground.
In the aftermath of the 2006 election, they didn’t have much choice. Faced with divided government and an angry electorate tired of polarized infighting, politicians had felt compelled to call for common ground and embrace bipartisanship. That was the easy part; making it work (assuming they really wanted it to work) was going to be much harder. Trying to revitalize bipartisanship, after two and a half decades of polarization, was swimming against the political tide.
How productive the calls for bipartisanship and common ground were after the wave elections in 1980 and 1994 is open to argument. Certainly there was genuine bipartisan progress on multiple fronts in the second Reagan term, until Iran-Contra and the Bork hearings in 1987 ignited a fierce period of polarization. Even following those events, some legislative progress was made during the Bush 41 administration. And, despite an accelerating polarizing climate, there were even some bipartisan successes between Bill Clinton and the Republican Congress after the 1994 election.
During the Reagan years, with Democrats controlling the House, major changes in the tax code, including major rate reductions, a new budget policy, Social Security and Medicare reform, and immigration reform were enacted. Under Bush 41, again, with Democrats controlling Congress, the savings and loan bailout was enacted and a minimum-wage increase was passed. A major clean-air bill also became law.
With Clinton in the White House and Republicans in control of both houses of Congress, the first major overhaul of federal welfare programs was achieved, as was a sweeping trade agreement with Mexico and Canada—the North American Free Trade Agreement. “Deadbeat dad” legislation, bringing the federal government into the enforcement of delinquent child-support payments, became law. In the first two years of the Bush 43 administration, with Democrats controlling the Senate, major education reform, No Child Left Behind, was enacted.
None of these significant policy changes came easily. Not only was bipartisanship essential for enactment, but finding intraparty consensus was also necessary (and given the large numbers of extreme partisans in both parties, never easy). But most telling was that these legislative achievements were approved under divided government. During times of one-party control (two years under Clinton and four years under Bush 43), virtually nothing of consequence was achieved. Norman Ornstein, a congressional scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, told the Washington Post, “United government in an age of fierce partisanship and sharp ideological polarization between the parties does not work very well for very long.”
It’s too early to tell (especially with the current bitterness over Iraq) if bipartisanship will emerge in the years following the 2006 election. After talking to many politicians who are genuinely frustrated with today’s climate of polarization, we believe much of the talk about common ground is more than sloganeering. Given the choice between bipartisanship and polarization, all but extremists would opt for common ground.
However, there is evidence that the tide is turning. Shortly after the new Democratic Congress convened on January 4, 2007, Democrats in the House passed several bills in the first one hundred hours, as they had pledged to do during the campaign. A bill to increase the minimum wage and another cutting student-loan interest rates were among those passed with large numbers of Republicans crossing over to vote with Democrats.
In his state-of-the-union speech on January 22, 2007, President Bush called on Congress to work in a bipartisan spirit, saying, “The American people don’t care which side of the aisle we are on.” That remark ignited the longest sustained applause of the night. One got the sense that there was a real yearning on both sides to end the long partisan war. (Nevertheless, the other war, in Iraq, has continued to widen the partisan divide, making efforts at consensus difficult at best.)
There has also been some progress among Washington institutions. The Business Roundtable (representing most major American corporations), the AARP (representing millions of senior citizens), and the Service Employees International Union (one of the largest unions in the country) had been on opposite sides of every health care proposal over the last two decades. In a rare coming together of these special interests groups, they announced on January 16, 2007, an agreement on the outlines of the new health care reform proposal. Their message was remarkable given that each of these groups has contributed mightily to polarization over the years. To hear these three combatants call for a consensus approach was music to the ears of common ground supporters.
Missing the point, cynics were quick to point to the barriers facing health care reform. Of course health care reform will be difficult, and these three groups may yet find themselves on opposing sides of the issue. Nevertheless, the mere fact that these special interests were sharing the same podium and uniting behind a set of health care principles spoke volumes about the commitment to roll back polarization in the aftermath of the 2006 elections.
Nor was that the only coming together of special interests who were historically on different sides in Washington debates. Beginning in early 2007, lobbyists for the conservative U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Business Roundtable met with their liberal counterparts from the Education Trust (an advocacy group for poor and minority children), the Citizens Commission on Civil Rights, and the National Council of La Raza, an advocacy group for Hispanic issues. Their agenda was to coordinate efforts to reauthorize and increase funding for the No Child Left Behind law.
Despite these and other favorable developments, however, few politicians believe that these efforts at common ground will endure. What a testament to the hammerlock polarization has around the neck of our national politics! Yet there is a lingering awareness in Washington that the voters’ impatience with polarization may be deeper and will last longer than in past years. “Wave” elections are happening with more frequency, and the political cycle is speeding up (there has been no “downtime” when politicians gave themselves and the public a rest between the 2006 election and the start of the next cycle).
For most of the last century, voters behaved like carmakers. They were reluctant to make radical “style changes” in government. No more. Who can doubt that the voters in 1994 had run out of patience with the long period of Democratic dominance of Congress? Who doubts that a similar fate decimated Republicans in 2006? How much longer can the evils of polarization continue to destroy our political system? Not much longer.
The eloquence of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. reaches across the years to provide an answer. The day before he was assassinated, King spoke to a frustrated black audience in Memphis, Tennessee, that was demanding to know how long the political powers would ignore their civil rights. King answered in his unique rhetorical style, “How long? Not long. I may not get there with you, but I have been to the top of the mountain and I have seen the other side. How long? Not long.”
King knew that the tide would turn against segregationist politicians. In time, those same politicians, believing their power was secure, would miss the rising tide and be washed away. Today’s politicians should pay heed to those words, and remember that voters today don’t have the patience of King and his followers in the 1960s. The American electorate is becoming increasingly impatient with dysfunctional, polarizing politics. The short time between the waves of 1994 and 2006 will only get shorter.
Those elected officials who called for common ground in the wake of the 2006 election may find that there are indeed political rewards in bipartisanship and consensus. Perhaps events spinning out of control around the globe, including terrorism and the development of nuclear weapons in countries hostile to the United States, are causing voters to demand more order here at home. Maybe this time voters will be watching more closely and rendering a judgment at the polls more quickly.
The question for elected politicians is: Should they wait? Should they tolerate the continued domination of politics by the polarizers, and hope that another (and inevitable) voter wave does not wash them away? Or should they look at the results in 1980, 1994, and 2006 and conclude that common ground is a message they can run on, and not an example of rhetorical sleight of hand? Will “common ground” be just another slogan after this wave, or a choice to govern in a bipartisan climate? Can a campaign that emphasizes common ground be successful? We believe it can.