The Bipartisan Mandate

Recently the Wall Street Journal argued that all social legislation should have bipartisan support in Olympia Snowe is Right. They cited the precedents of Social Security, The Civil Rights Act and Medicare (lets call them the Big Three) which did indeed receive support from Senators of both major parties. Let's set aside the fact that they gave no reason why such a gentleman's rule might be in order -- for if it does have good reason, then it would be simple enough to install it in the official rulebook at the beginning of the Congress' term.

The WSJ's argument reminds me of the anthropic principle in cosmology, in which it is observed that the physical constants of the universe are "uncannily" tuned so that life can exist. Author Paul Davies coined it the "Goldilocks Enigma." But many physicists have pointed out that it is not such a coincidence. If it were any other way, they say, we would not be here to make the observation in the first place.

So it is with the great social legislation of the 20th century. From 1917 until 1975, cloture required two-thirds of the Senators -- or 67 in today's Senate. Thus is it no great surprise that major bills during this period like the Big Three were passed with some bipartisan support. Has one party ever controlled two-thirds of the Senate? I doubt it. In effect, bipartisan support was mandated by the rules of the Senate, the "world's greatest deliberative body," as the WSJ reverently calls it

But consider for a moment The Civil Rights Act of 1964. Jim Crow, empowered by Plessy v Ferguson (1896), stood tall for 68 years before enough bipartisan support to sink him could be retained. By their logic, this was as it should be. Perhaps the Senate's rule change in 1975 to reduce the cloture threshold to 60 is an implicit recognition of the shortcomings of bipartisanship.

And as I review the bipartisan legislation of recent memory, I am not always overwhelmed by its wisdom. To be sure there were good bills, but two particularly bad and consequential ones cry out. The Senate voted 95-0 against Kyoto in 1997 and 77-23 for the Iraq War in 2002.