Let's Avoid Partisanship By Agreeing That I'm Right

Republicans have often cited the National Journal's 2007 Vote Ratings, according to which Barack Obama was the most liberal Senator for that year. (And Joe Biden was third.) Another popular stat alleged to show Obama's extreme partisanship points out that he voted with his party 97% of the time.

That all sounds impressive, but Obama has repeatedly declared that he will go across party lines, appealing not only to his fellow Democrats but to Independents and even Republicans. There's not a liberal America and a conservative America; there's the United States of America. Take that, National Journal! (And Jonathan Edwards, too.)

There are a few ways one might take this. If one is a naive Obama supporter, he might be inclined to think that the National Journal rating is wrong. Some have fussed over the Journal's method, but it's clear that by any objective metric, Obama is quite safely ensconced in the liberal camp. A second way to interpret our data is to declare Obama a liar (or more kindly, a "typical" politician). Blathering about bipartisanship wins elections, but he blathered thusly before becoming a Senator, too, and to no avail. As a matter of policy, however, we believe in taking Senator Obama at his word. But how then can we put this together with the fact of his (very) liberal voting record?

The answer: Obama really is inviting everyone to join him, and really believes in his ideas. These ideas all happen to be liberal - indeed, sometimes radically so - but everyone's welcome to join in supporting them. So you see, one can get beyond partisan politics. (Yes you can...yes you can...) All that's necessary is to agree with the ultra-liberal Obama. But we wonder: if a Republican proferred a similarly "post-partisan" approach where the right ideas just happened to be the Right's ideas, do you think that even if he rejected it, he'd call it non-partisan? (If your answer is: not before the Cubs win another World Series, then you're probably right.)