During the recent official visit of the italian president Giorgio Napolitano to the U.SA., the american president George Bush gave to him the new book of the veteran political reporter Ronald Brownstein, “The Second Civil War“. As Michiko Kakutami reports, the author clearly explains the difference between “hyperpartisanship” and the “age of bargaining” :
Ronald Brownstein contrasts the current age of “hyperpartisanship” with the “age of bargaining,” during which Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson (at least until his landslide victory in 1964) worked and negotiated, usually by necessity, with opponents on the other side of the political aisle. While this system tended to make for incremental, rather than revolutionary, reform, Mr. Brownstein says, “it compelled political leaders who held contrasting views and represented differing constituencies to talk and listen to each other.” It could also lead to big, overarching policy making: most notably, a bipartisan strategy for resisting the Soviet Union and contesting the cold war.
Ken Mehlman, the campaign manager for Mr. Bush in 2004, defined the contemporary era of american politics as of “hyperpartisanship.”
E.J. Dionne of the Washington Post adroitly explained the distinction:
“Hand-wringing over extreme partisanship has become a popular cause among learned analysts. They operate from Olympian heights and strain for evenhandedness by issuing tut-tuts to all sides, Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives.
But the evidence of recent days should settle the case: This administration has operated on the basis of a hyperpartisanship not seen in decades. Worse, the destroy-the-opposition, our-team-vs.-their-team approach has infected large parts of the conservative movement and the Republican Party. That’s a shame, since there are plenty of good people in both. Still, the tendency to subordinate principles to win short-term victories and cover up for the administration is, alas, rampant on the right.”
