Nevada City Advocate - A free news & entertainment Newspaper Serving Nevada City & Greater Nevada County: Lawrence: Politics wasn't always so bitter in America

Lawrence: Politics wasn't always so bitter in America
================================================================================
Tom  Lawrence on Oct 11 10:59am
 
Can’t they just get along? And get something done?
Politicians, that is. Is there no hope for true bipartisan cooperation in
Washington, D.C.? Did Rep. Joe Wilson’s outburst during President Obama’s
speech to a joint session of Congress reveal the depth of the animosity between
Republicans and Democrats.  It looks like it. The vote to admonish Wilson was
passed on almost completely partisan lines.
It wasn’t always this way. I just finished reading “Traitor to His Class:
The Privileged Life and Radical Presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt,” a
wonderful new book on FDR. The 824-page book took me weeks to read, both because
of its length and the quality of the research and writing by author H.W. Brands,
who shows the importance FDR placed on seeking bipartisan cooperation, or at
least the appearance of it.
FDR was no saint. He was a highly skilled politician and was often duplicitous.
He sought multiple points of view from numerous sources, sometimes without
telling the people he was assigning to various tasks. But he had a clear vision
of what he wanted to accomplish.
He usually knew that he couldn’t get the country out of the financial ditch
without support from across the aisle. Even though he had large majorities in
both houses of Congress, he named Republicans to his cabinet and sought their
advice.
His role model and cousin, President Theodore Roosevelt, was a Republican, as
were many of his relatives. FDR had grown up around members of the opposition
party and wasn’t afraid of talking with them.
In 1940, his opponent in the general election was Wendell Willkie, a former
Democrat who had changed parties. FDR admired Willkie and was even considering
dropping out of the 1944 race if Willkie had claimed the Republican nomination
again, according to the book.
It has happened before. When Republican Abraham Lincoln claimed the White House
in 1860, his closest rival, Democrat Stephen Douglas, offered his services to
Lincoln and the nation after the election.
In 1968, Republican Richard Nixon defeated Democrat Hubert Horatio Humphrey for
the presidency and then pondered offering a job in his administration to HHH or
to fellow Minnesota liberal Gene McCarthy, also a Democrat.
In the 1950s, Republican President Dwight Eisenhower worked closely with Sen.
Lyndon Johnson, the Democratic majority leader. With LBJ running the Senate and
Ike popular across the land, they helped America boom.
Look at what they accomplished: the birth of civil rights legislation, the
launch of NASA, the creation of the interstate highway system and so many other
important projects that served the country well.
Both knew how to give a partisan speech in an election but also realized how
important it was to work with the other side once the votes were cast. It seems
we’ve lost that today.
Politicians want to attack, attack and attack some more. And then issue a press
release. Accomplishments? They don’t seem to be major considerations.
Both sides are to blame.
After his death, Sen. Ted Kennedy was lauded for his work with Republicans
during his last two decades in the Senate, but he should also be remembered for
the wild charges he leveled against Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork in 1987.
The vicious campaign the Democrats launched against the scholarly Bork doomed
his chances to serve on the High Court and also started a partisan war over
Supreme Court nominees that continues to this day.
Just ask Justice Sonia Sotomayor.
Part of the reason for the bitter tone in national politics today is the state
of the two major parties. Almost all Republicans today are either conservative
or very conservative. There are precious few moderates left in the GOP and
almost no liberals in the party.
That wasn’t the case a few years ago. Nixon, the only man to appear on the
national ballot of a major party five times, would have a hard time fitting into
the party today.
After all, he created the EPA and OSHA, put wage-and-price caps on the economy,
and signed the bill to create Earth Day.
Some historians now call him the last liberal president. His old foe Sen.  
George McGovern, who met and spoke with Nixon several times after both left
office, told me last year that Nixon doesn’t look so bad to him now.
McGovern raised eyebrows a couple years ago when he revealed that he had voted
for Republican Gerald Ford in 1976. He said he knew and admired the man,
although he did vote for Jimmy Carter in 1980.
The Democrats used to have a thriving conservative and moderate wing, with LBJ,
Sen. Henry “Scoop” Jackson and others representing working-class Democrats,
many of whom were Catholics. It’s still there but it’s much smaller.
Nebraska Sen. Ben Nelson, a Democrat, is trying to prove his moderate views
once more. The health-care reform battle has left him in the crossfire.
Today, the two parties have chosen to fly with one wing. That means they often
end up in a circle of anger and bitterness, instead of flying forward and
guiding America.
Tom Lawrence is the editor of the Gering Courier and the senior copy editor of
the Star-Herald of Scottsbluff, Neb. Contact him at
tom.lawrence@geringcourier.com, at (308) 631-4743, or at 632-9046, Ext. 246.