The Myth of Partisanship: Politics are not always as starkly divided as we might think
It was, perhaps, the best line of the day. Last week, in a warm East Room ceremony, former President George W. Bush said he was glad that his official portrait was ready for the White House, not least because now President Obama could wander the halls, gaze up at it and wonder, “What would George do?”
(MORE: George Walker Bush and Presidents in Profile: 20 Portraits from the White House Archives)
There were laughs all around, but the joke cut close to an important truth about Obama, who has taken a tough and thus far effective approach to the war on terrorism, one not that dissimilar from Bush’s. It was widely noted last week that from the killing of Osama bin Laden to the rise in drone attacks to the President’s personal authority over a terrorist “kill list,” the incumbent Administration has conducted an antiterrorism campaign that makes the 2008 Republican claims about Obama’s potential weakness as a Commander in Chief seem particularly silly.
If you accept the conventions of our political conversation, then you have to believe we live in a Hobbesian world that is in a constant state of war. In truth, however, American politics is largely driven less by starkly competing ideologies than by an Establishment party with two wings.