Editor’s note: John P. Avlon is a senior political columnist for The Daily Beast and author of "Wingnuts: How the Lunatic Fringe is Hijacking America." Previously, he served as chief speechwriter for New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani and was a columnist and associate editor for The New York Sun.
[cnn-photo-caption image= http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2009/images/07/13/john.avlon.art.jpg caption="CNN independent analyst John Avlon says any hope of changing the partisan culture of Washington is a long way away."]
By John Avlon, Special to CNN
Government seems broken. Congress is more polarized than at any time in recent history. Patriotism is confused with partisanship.
How did we get here? It requires a look at the past year to see how wingnuts hijacked our politics.
“I hope he fails.” With those four words, Rush Limbaugh coined what would become Republican strategy. It’s a telling sign of the times when professional polarizers in talk radio give talking points to party leadership, instead of vice versa.
But of course, it takes two to have bipartisanship and neither party has a monopoly on virtue or vice. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi deserves her share of the blame. After President Obama delegated what would become the $787 billion stimulus bill, Republicans were shut out of the negotiating process, undercutting President Obama’s claims to represent bipartisanship. She ultimately gained no Republican votes and lost the support of eleven centrist Democrats.
As Blue Dog Congressman Jim Cooper from Tennessee said at the time, while summing up the perspective of the liberal House leadership aligned with Speaker Nancy Pelosi, saying, “They don’t mind the partisan fighting ‘cause that’s what they are used to. In fact, they’re really good at it. And they’re a little bit worried about what a post-partisan future might look like.” The Progressive Change Campaign Committee started running attack ads against centrist Democrats who voted with their districts rather than with the party line.
Suspicions and recriminations have only increased since then. The filibuster is now almost a daily part of life in Congress. Democrats were furious when Sen. Richard Shelby, Republican of Alabama, put a blanket hold on 70 of President Obama’s nominations. It wasn’t much different than stunts the Democrats were pulling when the GOP had control of Congress. In 2004, Sen. Harry Reid put a hold on President Bush’s executive branch nominees because Reid wanted an aide appointed to a committee on nuclear regulation.
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Now, even attempts at public bipartisanship are dismissed as a show trail. House Minority Leader John Boehner captured the pervasive distrust that borders on conspiracy theory when he characterized yesterday's health care summit as a trap, saying “I don't want to walk into some trap. I don't want to walk into some political event…I don't want to walk into some set-up; I don't know who's going to be there," Boehner said. "I don't know how big the room's going to be. I don't know what the set-up is going to be." It sounds like he was expecting a mob hit rather than a meeting of the different branches of government.
It's safe to say that any hope of changing the poisonously partisan culture of Washington is still a long way away.
The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of John Avlon.