Bipartisanship loses role model

One was gracious, the other garrulous. One was severe, the other soft. One was rail-thin; the other carried a spare tire around his waist. One never touched alcohol; one was a prodigious drinker. One was a Mormon, the other a Catholic. One spent his adult life in the cold winds off the Wasatch Mountains, the other in the warm tides of the Gulf Stream. One was Coolidge-reticent in his speech, the other Churchillvoluble. One earned pocket money by delivering newspapers; the other came from a family where newspapermen were in their pocket.

The contemplative, introverted Orrin G. Hatch and the buoyant, extroverted Edward M. Kennedy were the oddest couple in contemporary American politics. Kennedy died 13 years ago, and Hatch died this spring. With them, the spirit of bipartisanship in the Senate died.

The two worked together to win the Children’s Health Insurance Program. America’s families were better for it. They learned to respect political figures with different outlooks on life. Hatch was no friend, for example, of the Freedom of Information Act that journalists revere. Kennedy was free with information with the journalists who, sometimes to their discredit, revered him. And it is not too much to say that Kennedy injected a sense of fun into Hatch, and the Utahan added a touch of discipline to the Massachusetts lawmaker.

They liked each other, to the surprise of both of them and many others. They learned from each other, to the betterment of the Senate, even though they represented the extremes of their party, Kennedy on the left, Hatch on the right.

With Hatch’s passing, we are left to contemplate the passing of an era when two men dared cross the aisle and befuddle their colleagues.

And yet there is hope in the hopelessness of today’s politics. President Joe Biden invited Sen. Charles Grassley to the White House before he nominated Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court. Washington gasped — and the Iowa Republican voted against her — but it was a start. When Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy addressed members of Congress last month, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and Democratic firebrand Maxine Waters, both of California, sat beside each other. Capitol Hill shook. A bipartisan group helped shape an infrastructure bill. America benefited.

And recently two dozen female senators from both parties gathered for a chicken dinner.

The irony is that the modern bipartisanship impulse may have been strongest in the early days of the President Richard Nixon’s polarizing administration. The newly inaugurated president instructed his appointments secretary to arrange frequent meetings with leaders of both parties. William Timmons, the White House liaison officer, opened a bipartisan office on Capitol Hill and arranged to have a picture taken with Nixon, House Republican Leader Gerald R. Ford and Democratic House Speaker John McCormack

to hang on the wall. A year later, Nixon specified that meetings of both parties’ leaders be biweekly. After the 1970 elections, when the Republicans gained a Senate seat but lost a dozen in the House, Timmons recommended Nixon “have a series of half-hour meetings with those liberal senators who have frequently been opposed to his legislation,” adding, “The purpose of these meetings would be to build better rapport with the ‘bad guys’ in hopes they’ll meet us halfway next year.”

So it has come to this: Nixon as an exemplar of bipartisanship. But fair is fair. The atmosphere in which Nixon governed, at least before Watergate, was far different from what prevails today. It is also fair to say that the slide toward our contemporary mutual contempt might have begun 50 years ago with the break-in that began the end of the Nixon presidency.)

Today, political figures are motivated more by opposition to their rivals than by adherence to their own beliefs. Bipartisanship is considered collaboration rather than cooperation.

“Team-sport politics replaced bipartisanship, and there’s big money in uncompromising partisanship,” former GOP Gov. Jon Huntsman of Utah —who held ambassador posts under Republican President Donald Trump and Democratic President Barack Obama — told me. “Orrin really set the mark for crossparty cooperation — and on big things, with key players like Sen. Kennedy. It’s essential that the Hatch model return in order to preserve our republic. Without it, the divide simply widens.”