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An alien statesman from our forgotten bipartisan past
Many of the clowns crowding our current political scene revile compromise, viewing civics as a zero-sum death match. They spend most of their time on the public dime posturing for the next election, toadying to special interests, and raising funds to savage the character and programs of their opponents.
This makes it hard to remember that for much of the 20th Century, most federal elected officials felt their job was to respect the people’s verdict in the last election by working together to craft optimal policies until the next election.They even had the odd notion that, while disagreements over domestic issues were permissible, the two parties could best ensure national security by presenting a strong and unified front in foreign relations.
A Republican Senator, Arthur Vandenberg (1884–1951), coined a once-famous phrase as shorthand for that quaint but constructive concept: “politics stops at the water’s edge.”
In the last decade of his life, the eminent Michigander helped wean his party from its isolationist traditions and join with Democrats to form an enduring foreign policy consensus. That bipartisan unity achieved victory in World War II, created the United Nations, and effectively contained Communism during the Cold War.
