Obama and Bipartisanship

Throughout the majority of Obama’s campaign for the presidency, he pledged to work with Republicans in a spirit of bipartisanship. In the three weeks he has been president, Obama has proved time and time again that his promise of bipartisanship was hollow. This is particularly true when we take a look at his obsessiveness with pushing his economic stimulus bill through Congress.

President Obama has spent most of his time as president trying to get an economic stimulus bill worth almost $1 trillion through Congress in tact. While the bill did pass the through the House of Representatives, not a single Republican representative voted for the bill. Republicans voiced their concerns about the bill to a mostly deaf president, who turned around and called them “irresponsible” and the delay “inexcusable” while completely avoiding the issues raised by the GOP.

Republican concerns were finally addressed by Obama’s fellow Democratic party members, but without the President’s involvement. On the contrary, the President said that he will not “return to the failed theories of the last eight years” and scolded the GOP even more for the delay. Addressing Republican concerns about the bill is not returning “to the failed theories of the last eight years,” but is, in reality, bipartisanship.

Why bipartisanship will never work

In the political world, bipartisanship is a practice rarely observed. American politics have two major parties: the Republicans and the Democrats, and countless smaller political parties, including the Libertarian Party. Despite reality, in which the borders of the two major political parties have become hopelessly slurred, each party is supposed to stand for its own values and its own views on the best way of governing the nation.

Contradictory ways of governance do not lend themselves well to working together. For the sake of argument, we will address each party for what it is intended to represent instead of what it actually represents nowadays. Generally speaking, the Republicans are for big, private business and small government, while the Democrats are for big government and the individual American. The contradiction lies between the way the two parties view the government’s role in the lives of Americans and American industry.

While the core beliefs of the parties are in practice skewed, the fact that there is a difference between the two already creates problems. Members of one party will vote one way while members of the other party will vote differently.

Obama’s promise of bipartisanship is completely in vein as he has already proved. Not only is he not willing to try, but it was in vein to begin with. By completely ignoring the Republican concerns with his stimulus bill, he has proven that he is not even willing to sit down and negotiate with the Republicans. That is not bipartisanship. That is a hollow promise.

The original article was written for Despotic Democracy and can be found here.