More on "bipartisanship"

dday, over on Digby's blog, in a post about the Bloomberg/Schwarzenegger/etc. call for "bipartisanship and an end to "partisan bickering," said this:

"Let's everybody get along" is a transparent way to not say "Let's everyone do what I say" when that's the actual meaning.

That sentence in particular stood out for me (thought the whole post is worth your time).

It's worth mentioning because it reminds me of alleged "postpartisans" and calls for "bipartisanship" at least throughout my own political lifetime.

After the 2000 election, the airwaves were filled, for months and months, with calls for the Democrats to put the ugliness of the 2000 election aside, in a spirit of "unity" and "bipartisanship," and just do everything the new president said to do. For some reason, this did not mean the guy who had just stolen the presidency after losing the popular vote had to listen to anything any Democrat said.

After 9/11, it got even worse. You could barely turn on the TV or pick up a newspaper without hearing that now was not the time for partisanship and we should all just line up behind the president and his policies, which--surprise!--meant Bush had a long period in which he could enact much more extreme policies than the public would ever ordinarily have supported, because criticism of anything he did exposed the critic to accusations of insufficient bipartisanship.

Today, the hero of the "bipartisanship" fetishists seems to be Michael Bloomberg, a neoconservative longtime war supporter.

You know what? I don't actually think "excessive partisanship" is a problem. The parties argue because they have different ideas, and that's just how the national debate works: people actually, you know, debate.

But even if it is, why does "bipartisanship" always mean Democrats have to do everything the Republicans want, and never the opposite? When someone proposes the two sides actually meet in the middle and both make concessions, instead of one side being called on to just capitulate in the name of unity, maybe I'll at least take that proposal seriously.