Our political pipe dream
Shortly after the hot air was let out of the Kerry-McCain trial balloon by the contrarian senator from Arizona himself, further proof emerged that the notion of bipartisanship in this festering political climate is as quaint as your mama's threat to wash your mouth out with soap for cussing:
Mere hours after South Dakota Sen. Tom Daschle, a Democrat, took to the Senate floor last month to plead with his colleagues for a renewed commitment to inter-party civility, news broke that Vice President Dick Cheney had dropped the F-bomb on a senior Democratic senator as the Senate had gathered two days earlier for its annual group photo.
"I think he was just having a bad day," the insulted solon, Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont, told CNN.
Yes, well, it's a bad day in general for those who yearn, as one political observer put it, for that somewhere-over-the-rainbow sense of mutual respect and cooperation between the parties and their adherents.
Several recent events have kindled, in the breasts of at least some Americans, a flicker of yearning for bipartisanship.
First, of course, was the news that Massachusetts Sen. John F. Kerry, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, was flirting with Republican Sen. John McCain about the No. 2 place on the ticket. The two, war veterans whose friendship and mutual respect are based on their formative experiences in Vietnam, were seen by some as a kind of dream team, offering the possibility of a "national unity ticket" in a deeply divided time.
Positive feedback came from the strangest places: "I was ready to say, 'Why not?' " said David Corn, Washington editor of the Nation and one of the few liberal contributors on Fox News Network. "John Kerry was looking for what might have been the decisive advantage. He was sending a signal that he wanted to break the cycle of political violence."
After days of denials, McCain blew the unity ticket out of the water. Any unity he'd be displaying in this campaign would be with the man who beat him to a pulp in 2000. And then McCain proved he wasn't kidding when he publicly embraced President Bush on a campaign swing through Washington and Nevada.
Also, as the doomed Kerry-McCain courtship was winding to its fruitless conclusion, former President Reagan died, and again, bipartisanship yearning was in the air. A full week of tributes, reminiscences and, eventually, bickering about his historical significance included many nostalgic accounts of a guy who would check his partisan feelings at the door at the end of the day to toss back a brew with his good friend from across the aisle, House Speaker Thomas P. "Tip" O'Neill.
