Great presidents do manage to push past partisanship — not by reaching out to the other party, but by overwhelming it with a new vision. Franklin Roosevelt did not offer a hand to the defeated Hooverites. Nor did the Republicans rally round the president for long during the Great Depression. In the House, the opposition voted almost unanimously to kill Social Security in 1935. Roosevelt’s success lay not in cooperation, but in the force of the collective, social-gospel vision he articulated from the start.
Ronald Reagan’s fierce attachment to three verities — markets are good, government is bad, communism is evil — also meant little reaching out to the other side. His every move reverberated with the cold war philosophy he described so simply: “We win and they lose.” Roosevelt and Reagan reveal the dirty rotten secret of bipartisanship. It happens only when one side is cowed, beaten or frightened. More competitive elections mean more ardent debates.
And so it should be. Our government is designed that way. In the Federalist Papers, James Madison offered his bold solution to the problem of clashing interests: more clashing interests. “Ambition must be made to counteract ambition,” he declared. ... New York Times
By the way, one vengeful Republican ("bitter old White Southern man") lays out the party's plan for dealing with any Obama nominee for the Supreme Court.
