The Essence of Postpartisanship

Denver is gearing up for the DNC, which, like all political conventions, will be a partisan event. Of course, this comes as no shock; it is after all the Democratic National Convention. There can be little doubt that next week, as Democratic Party pride is on full parade, Barack Obama’s calls for postpartisan unity will not be as prominent as they once were.

It is easy to understand why Obama’s message of postpartisanship helped launch him to victory in the Democratic primaries. Many Americans are hungry for something that rises above the rigid, inefficient partisanship that has marked the country’s recent history.

It is also easy to understand why Obama’s cries for postpartisanship have subsided. With the race so tight, and with Republicans rolling out their inevitable attack ads and talking points, it doesn’t make much sense for Obama to extend a welcoming hand to the other side. In fact, doing so at such a time would be politically foolish.

Therefore, with the final stretch of the presidential campaign approaching and animus growing, it was surprising to encounter a genuine example of postpartisanship at Invesco Field, the site of Obama’s DNC acceptance speech. However, it came not from a young, inspirational, Democratic candidate from Illinois, but an elderly, unostentatious, Republican scholar from Colorado College named Dr. Robert Loevy.

The day before, Loevy had given a lecture to a group of university students gathered from across the country to attend the DNC in which he presented his proposal to reform the electoral process of selecting the Democratic and Republican presidential candidates. The thrust of his argument was that the initial caucus in Iowa and primary in New Hampshire gave an undue and overrepresentative influence to these two states. He also viewed the ensuing nominating process, in which citizens of most states are almost always prevented from being able to vote, as undemocratic.

He instead proposed an eight-week process in which the states vote 10 at a time in two-week intervals, beginning with the 10 least populous and ending with the 10 most populous states. The candidates with the most votes after each stage would move onto the subsequent round, while those with the least votes would be forced to drop out until the party’s presidential candidate emerged.

From the start, the crowd’s resistance to his proposal could be discerned, as if the emcee’s introduction of Loevy as a “card-carrying Republican” had evoked an instinctive distrust among the mostly Democratic audience even before he spoke. In an age of inflexible disagreement between the parties, as well as pundits, it seemed implausible that a Republican suggesting political reform would not be trying to advance his own team’s agenda.

However, the next night, while talking to Loevy at a banquet at Invesco Field, it became clear this was not a partisan issue for him. Rather, it was a matter of putting a purer democratic electoral system in place. For him, the higher cause of democracy — which both parties can agree is the most American of values — was more important than trying to promote Republican or conservative aims.

One comment Loevy made particularly underscored his objective pragmatism. Based on his belief that the national Electoral College is also undemocratic, he stated that in principal Al Gore was the rightful winner of the 2000 presidential election. It’s difficult to find many Republicans willing to admit as much.

To me, Loevy’s ability to see beyond party lines to reach a pragmatic conclusion — even when the conclusion didn’t benefit his own party — is the essence of postpartisanship.

This is no time for Obama, who is in the midst of an increasingly venomous contest, to wax poetic about postpartisan togetherness in which both parties coexist in blissful harmony. Obama needs to be tough and above all else forcefully make the case as to why he is the superior choice over Republican candidate John McCain.

But one can only hope that if and when Obama takes the office of president he will fulfill his earlier calls for postpartisanship through a presidency that places unbiased pragmatism — as exemplified by Loevy’s electoral reform proposal — above blind ideology or party loyalty.