The No Labels group doesn’t understand bipartisanship

No Labels sounds noble in theory. But the group misunderstands what bipartisanship is. It’s not two parties deciding to be nice to each other. It’s a moment when their self-interests happen to align—moments that are increasingly rare. Washington does not have a “civility problem.” It has a polarization problem. Politicians aren’t any meaner now than they were 30 years ago. It’s just that over the last few decades, the two parties have become more ideologically coherent. Back in the 1950s, some Southern Democrats opposed racial integration, and some Republicans in the North favored a robust social safety net. Opposition to abortion was a bipartisan affair. There was a Christian right, but there was a Christian left as well. (The first Catholic president was a Democrat, after all.)…

Perhaps the greatest achievement of No Labels is to show why labels exist in the first place. They’re so busy talking about what they’re not—not Republican, not Independent, not conservative, not liberal—you never get a handle on what they are. Labels are a useful shortcut for voters who want to know what a group is all about. The lack of a positive mission beyond bipartisanship and civility (which both Republicans and Democrats also call for) makes it hard to know what they really want.

There’s nothing wrong with calling for reason and civility. Jon Stewart did just that at the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear, with eloquence if not tangible success. The difference is that Stewart explicitly removed himself from the political sphere. (Critics got angry that he didn’t call for young people to vote.) But both the Stewart rally and No Labels have the same flaw: They promote “civility” in media and politics, respectively, when in fact the problem is structural.