February 12, 2009
Dear President Obama,
Today being the 200th anniversary of the
birth of our greatest president, what better time to talk about partisanship?
It would be hard to
imagine a politician more partisan than Lincoln, in his time or our own. He fought tirelessly and relentlessly for the success of his party. But that side of his personality has become almost a footnote to history as successive generations have canonized him as a man who transcended party.
To reconcile the man and the myth we need to understand that partisanship for
Lincoln was a means to an end rather than an end in itself. He was far
too wise to think that it mattered in any absolute sense whether his
party was successful or not. What did matter was whether he was able to
accomplish his policy objectives. In so far as being partisan helped
him to do so, he devoted himself to his party. But when his party
became an obstacle to the success of his policies, he wasn't afraid to trade his
party for a new one that better represented his politics. He did so
twice, once when he left the dying Whig Party, in which he
had been a lifetime member, and then again when he stood for reelection
for president as the candidate of the National Union Party, instead of
as the candidate of the Republican Party under whose banner he was elected to his
first term.
Lincoln used partisanship to achieve his political
agenda rather than using his political agenda to achieve partisanship.
Therein lies a lesson of inestimable value for us.
Mr. President,
it seems to me that your noble pursuit of bipartisanship has become an
end rather than a means. Lincoln, I think, would not have understood
this. If you actually needed Republican votes to get your programs
passed, then you would have no choice but to go after them. But you don't need their votes, not with this Congress.
(You'll get a few Republican votes when you need them regardless of what you do, not because of
your charm but because they need to vote that way for their political
survival.)
What you do need are the votes of Democrats. But by devoting
so much time and energy to reaching across the aisle you have empowered some
conservative members of your own party to ignore your leadership. In this time of crisis, that doesn't serve
your party or the country. To paraphrase one of your metaphors, when
your house is burning down, you need everyone working together to save
it, rather than working at cross purposes that put the whole
neighborhood at risk.
The point here, as Lincoln so brilliantly showed us, is that what matters in the long run is the success of
your policies rather than the success of your party. By being less of a party man, you have actually made it more difficult to succeed with your
policies. As Lincoln understood so well, your political opponents, even
in times of great crises, have no choice but to oppose you. That's what
they do. So let them.
Meanwhile, look to your own troops. You can't garner the support of the opposition
party by abdicating the leadership of your own. In fact, the harder you
reach out to your opponents, the harder you make it for them to embrace
you. National politics is a public medium, played out on a stage in front of the entire country. Under those circumstances, only by reaching out less to your opponents will you give them the opportunity to reach out more to you. The harder you try to sell bipartisanship, the harder you make it for Republicans to join you. Despite your good intentions, it begins to come across as sounding holier than thou. Nobody responds well to that. So ignore your opponents--until they reach out to you. Then embrace their overtures as you would have liked them to embrace yours.
When you allow your opponents to reach out to you, you give them the chance to be perceived as statesmen. You give them
an opening to support your policies--for the good of the country--without being seen to have come under the Obama spell. The bottom line is this: If you really want Republican votes, focus more
attention on your party than on theirs.
In a two-party system, the only way you can get anything done is to have one of those
parties solidly behind you. Lincoln was profoundly aware of this. Only
by gathering your own party behind you can you tap the political
capital you need to lead during a time of national emergency. Then, paradoxically, that's when you'll have the best chance of getting support
from Republicans.
You know all this, of course. Giving you
political advice is like telling Michael Jordan how to shoot a fadeaway. And lately, compared to the first few weeks of your administration,
you've begun to sound more like the leader of a political party
rather than a leader without a political party. That's a good thing,
not because the success or failure of your party matters in
the long run, but because the success or failure of your policy matters in the long run.
Fortunately, as Lincoln knew so well, there is a form of party leadership that allows you to put your country first.
Even when Lincoln was most partisan, his
inherent decency meant that he played the deadly-serious game
of politics with a sense of equanimity toward his opponents that put
him in a class by himself. They weren't evil, he knew, they were simply
coming from a different place. He didn't demonize his opponents as much
as he simply beat them fair and square in the marketplace of ideas. But
he did beat them. He played with class but he played to win. To extend
his hand in friendship toward his political opponents, as he was
inclined to do, to treat them the way he would want to be treated were
he in their place even after he had soundly defeated them, that wasn't bipartisanship as much as it was good sportsmanship. Sheer, uncommon decency. Or better yet, let's call it civility.
Lincoln played hard but he played fair. Far from preventing him from
being partisan, his qualities of humanity and fairness--his innate civility--made him all that much more effective as a competitor in partisan politics. People followed Lincoln because they could sense that he was the kind of man they wanted to be, even when they didn't
agree with him. The same, I think, is true of you.
Mr.
President, I'm speaking here not as a Democrat or a Republican but as a
reader of history. We need the kind of leader who can
rise above partisanship when necessary and also rise above
bipartisanship when that is necessary. We need someone who can get things
done, without trashing those who stand in his way, but get things done
he must. That's what a political party does best, to focus the efforts
of a large number of people on achieving a small number of goals. The
better you lead your own party, the better you will lead the country.
I'm
not suggesting a return to the rabid partisanship of the previous eight years. Just the opposite. We don't need another president who puts his party first. What we do need is a president who uses his party as a tool to get those things done that will most benefit the national interest. I urge you to return to the
pragmatic, principled party-leadership that allowed Lincoln to wield great power in the
service of great ends. On his
bicentennial, what better tribute can there be to such a man?
