When no good deed goes unpunished

The price of bipartisanship

Hear, my children, about an earlier time in our country's history. A time when a family with one income could own a house and send its children to college. A time when television still seemed a wonder and the anchormen of television news programs were distinguished public figures. A time when children walked to school. A time when political partisanship observed boundaries, and Republicans were as likely to be liberal on some issues as Democrats, and Democrats as conservative as Republicans.

Into this world stepped Lyndon Johnson, determined to change one thing about this pleasant picture that wasn't so pleasant. The first southern president since before the Civil War, Johnson proposed to drag the South into the 20th century. He took dead aim at the Jim Crow system of segregation that had existed since the aftermath of Reconstruction. He did so with all the political guile at his command, and yet in the noble tradition of bipartisanship. The result of his efforts was the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which forbade racial segregation in nearly all aspects of American public life.

The striking thing about this accomplishment by a Democrat president was that the landmark measure was more strongly supported by Republicans than by members of his own party. In the House of Representatives, 80 percent of Republicans voted in favor while only 61 percent of Democrats did. In the Senate, southern Democrats filibustered the bill for more than two months. After the filibuster was broken, 82 percent of Senate Republicans voted for the bill, against 69 percent of Democrats.

The bipartisan nature of the vote gave the Civil Rights Act legitimacy that has made it untouchable ever since. Ironically, though, this bipartisan success story had a partisan denouement we’re still living with today. 

Southern Democrats felt betrayed by Johnson, whom they had considered one of their own. Many believed they no longer had a place in the Democratic party. One by one, then in larger numbers, they began a migration out of the Democratic party into the Republican. Some carried their resentments about having civil rights rammed down their throats with them, but most acknowledged that that battle had been lost and concentrated on other items of the conservative agenda. They made common cause with Republicans, some of whom who had supported civil rights but drew a line against other liberal reforms.

The long march of the southern conservatives from the Democrats to the Republicans took a generation. During this period, liberal Republicans grew uncomfortable with what their party was becoming. A less pronounced but no less consequential reverse march, of liberal Republicans to the Democrats, completed the reorientation of the two parties. By the beginning of the 21st century, there were almost no conservatives in the Democratic party and no liberals among Republicans.

The new configuration made bipartisanship impossible on nearly all issues of consequence. Any member of either party who had the temerity to pursue compromise with the other party was likely to be targeted and defeated at the next primary election. Politics had always been a team sport in Washington and America more broadly, but now it became team warfare. Divergence from the party line was interpreted as treason and dealt with as such. 

Nothing in politics is permanent. But this new system has proved stable and is likely to be enduring. The country suffers, but the parties flourish. Each uses the specter of the other to raise money and keep potential waverers in line.

It would appear that nothing less than a serious jolt to the American status quo will change things. Indeed, it was just such a jolt—the Civil War—that created the old system. Southern conservatives remained Democrats for generations after the Civil War because the Republicans were the party that had defeated secession; to defect from the Democrats was to dishonor granddad. But legacy lasts only so long. When Johnson nailed the Democratic flag to the mast of civil rights, the southerners said adios.

It would be nice to believe that bipartisanship might resurface spontaneously. It would also be nice to think one income will again support a middle-class lifestyle. Absent the shock of war or other calamity, the latter will probably happen before the former.