By: Politico

As Barack Obama and John McCain look forward to November, both candidates seem primed to claim that he is the only candidate capable of being a "bipartisan" leader. Obama is fond of saying that "we may call ourselves Democrats and Republicans, but we are Americans first." McCain touts a "long record of bipartisan problem solving" and claims to have always "put our country before any party."

Should the next president proceed to govern in such a way to heal (or least overcome) America’s partisan divisions, it would be no mean feat. Our research on congressional roll call voting documents that Congress is at a 100-year low in bipartisanship – a finding supported by the work of many other scholars. In fact, the supposedly "purple" election of 2006 with its freshman class full of red state Democrats has scarcely reduced the rancor and polarization of Congress.

There are many reasons to be skeptical that American politics could be transformed by either Obama or McCain. First, American’s have been promised change before. Remember George W. Bush’s claim that he was "a uniter, not a divider"? While it’s a fashionable mistake to blame Bush for all of America’s partisan rancor, his positions and tactics most certainly made matters worse.

Second, despite the protestations of the Ralph Naders, Rush Limbaughs and Ann Coulters, there is scarcely little evidence that either Obama or McCain is a moderate. Our research indicates that McCain’s position has fluctuated quite a lot during his Senate career. In some congressional terms he is among the most liberal Republicans and in other terms he falls well to the conservative end of his party. But his position in the current Congress is only slightly more liberal than the median Republican in the Senate.

Despite often repeated claims to the contrary, Barack Obama is not the most liberal member of the Senate (Russ Feingold of Wisconsin is). But he’s no moderate, either. In the most recent term, Obama compiled a voting record almost identical to Hilary Rodham Clinton’s. They are both slightly to the left of the median Senate Democrat.

The third reason de-polarizing American politics will be difficult is that a new president eager for quick legislative victories will undoubtedly find it easier to work with his own party than to undertake the painstaking work of building bipartisan coalitions. This would be especially true for Barack Obama. Given the string of Republican defeats in special elections in red states, it seems inevitable that the Democrats will substantially increase their margins in Congress. It is even possible that they might reach a filibuster-proof margin in the Senate. So how hard will Obama work to get Republican votes for his agenda when he may not need them?

But in the spirit of the times, perhaps we can be audacious enough to hope. America’s polarized politics are not simply a reflection of the different policy positions of the parties. It is also related to a style of politics where those differences are exacerbated for strategic electoral reasons. It is a welcome sign that neither candidate seems to relish this feature of contemporary politics. Of course, they are not completely immune either. Consider Obama’s continued distortion of McCain’s "100 years in Iraq" statement or McCain’s suggestion that Obama wants to appease Hamas.

However, in spite of these charges, both men seem to have an earnest desire to keep the campaign discourse on a high level and to admonish those surrogates and 527s who fail to live up to those standards. While it would be naïve to suggest that Democrats and Republicans should converge to some policy middle ground, carrying out important policy debates in a principled, high-minded way would certainly be an important step forward.

The challenges that a new administration will face are daunting. On the domestic front, the new administration will have to deal with an economy that is weak and declining. The next president will also face enormous foreign policy challenges in a time when the faith in past approaches has faded and U.S. prestige in the world has waned.

Tax policy is an area where polarization poses great challenges to good policymaking. In a polarized environment, Bush eschewed compromises that may have led to permanent changes in the tax code and instead pushed through Republican-backed changes that expire in 2010. The pending expiration of the tax cuts presents the opportunity for comprehensive reform such as that accomplished in 1986 in a less partisan era.

But so far this opportunity seems lost on McCain and Obama. McCain wants to make Bush cuts permanent (even though he voted against them) and pushes for further cuts. Obama wants Bush’s cuts for top earners to expire plus he wants to increase capital gains taxes and payroll taxes on the wealthy. Both men’s programs are straight from the partisan playbook, not blueprints for bipartisan compromise.

The new president will face a choice. He can tackle taxes and other problems in an uncompromising, partisan manner with solutions tailor-made to appeal to his party’s base. Or he could take the more difficult path of building a bipartisan consensus. We think the second path is ultimately the more rewarding one. Not only will it produce better public policies, but it would go a long way towards repairing America’s political divide.

Nolan McCarty is a professor of politics and public affairs at Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School; Keith Poole is a professor of political science at University California, San Diego; Howard Rosenthal is a professor of politics at New York University. They are the co-authors of “Polarized America: The Dance of Ideology and Unequal Riches.”

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