Up the Hill and Across the Aisle: Discovering the Path to Bipartisanship in Washington

• Date: 01 May 2016
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/lsq.12114
• Published date: 01 May 2016
• Author: Matthew N. Beckmann

MATTHEW N. BECKMANN

University of California, Irvine

Up the Hill and Across the Aisle:

Discovering the Path to

Bipartisanship in Washington

Appeals for bipartisan diplomacy pepper popular commentary, often with wistful

references to a bygone era where leaders (like Lyndon Johnson and Everett Dirksen) set

aside partisan point scoring to serve the public interest. Here we reconsider the elements

driving bipartisan contact in Washington. Stepping back from popular narratives, we sit-

uate the president-opposing leader relationship within a more general class of

institutional bargaining, leading to the prediction that bipartisan negotiation emerges

from a particular combination of incentives and institutions—namely, when the presi-

dent is strong politically (rendering opposing leaders willing to compromise) but

opposing party leaders are strong institutionally (rendering them crucial to passing the

deal). Utilizing Presidential Daily Diaries, hypotheses are tested against original data on

presidents’ personal interactions with opposing Senate leaders across 40 years, 20 Con-

gresses, and eight presidencies (1961–2000).

Because elected off‌icials’ foremost consideration is keeping their

jobs, partisan electoral incentives bleed into governance, and a burgeon-

ing literature reveals how this can discourage presidents and opposing

partisans from seeking agreement or making concessions even when

bipartisan policy accord is possible (see Cox and McCubbins 2005;

Gilmour 1995; Groseclose and McCarty 2001; Harbridge and Malhotra

2011; Jessee and Theriault 2014; Kernell 1993; Lee 2009; Sinclair 2006;

Theriault 2013). On this score, Matthew Lebo and Andrew O’Geen’s

(2011) recent study is telling. By demonstrating the president’s success

(or failure) in Congress does indeed affect fellow partisans’ success (or

failure) in subsequent elections, Lebo and O’Geen conf‌irm, all else

equal, the president’s partisan allies have electoral incentives to support

his legislative agenda while opposing party leaders have extra electoral

incentives not to.

Yet as well-worn as the road to partisan sparring may be, paths to

bipartisanship do exist. In fact, Beltway folklore celebrates cases where

presidents and opposing party leaders worked to resolve the day’s most

LEGISLATIVE STUDIES QUARTERLY, 41, 2, May 2016 269

DOI: 10.1111/lsq.12114

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C2016 Washington University in St. Louis

controversial policy questions: President Johnson plotting with Everett

Dirksen (R-IL) on civil rights; President Nixon bargaining with Ted

Kennedy (D-MA) on healthcare; President Bush (41) negotiating with

Tom Foley (D-WA) on taxes; President Clinton haggling with Newt

Gingrich (R-GA) on welfare. Systematic research has added generaliz-

able meat to these anecdotal bones. Assembling detailed evidence on

postwar lawmaking, David Mayhew showed Washington regularly

enacted signif‌icant new laws, during both unif‌ied and divided govern-

ment (2005) and despite increased partisan polarization (2011).

1

Scholarly research on presidential-congressional relations also

f‌lags high-level interparty interactions’ importance, though the incen-

tives facilitating bipartisan contact remain unclear. Acknowledging

“there is a natural tendency to view the opposition party as eager to

undercut the White House” (1989, 37), George Edwards indicated a

“bipartisan approach” may occasionally succeed, but only if the presi-

dent can “subordinate his role as a party leader to that of his role as a

coalition leader” (89). Jon Bond and Richard Fleisher’s analysis

yielded a similar insight: “The behavior of the opposition party leader

is less consistent with the role of leaders in responsible party legisla-

tures. Even on important votes, the opposition party leaders support

the president about 30% of the time” (1990, 150). Likewise, Charles

Jones concluded, “... when it comes to making laws in Washington

...it is normally done with a sub stantial amount of cross-institutional

and cross-partisan interaction through elaborate sequences featuring

varying degrees of iteration” (1994, 273).

2

In short, interbranch, inter-

party negotiations have long been identif‌ied as an important and

variable phenomenon, but general theories explaining why or

predicting when remain elusive.

Here we recast the relationship between presidents and opposing

leaders in Congress. Unlike contemporaneous reports or retrospective

memoirs—chronicles that highlight the distinctiveness of the moment,

issues, and personalities involved—ours is a rather parsimonious

explanation. Situating bipartisanship within a general institutional

framework, we predict bipartisan contact emerges when the president

is strong politically (rendering opposing leaders willing to compro-

mise) but opposing party leaders are strong institutionally (rendering

them crucial to passing the deal). Using presidential “Daily

Diaries”—minute-by-minute records of presidents’ activities and

interactions—hypotheses are tested against original data on

presidents’ contact, in person or over-the-phone, with opposing

Senate leaders during a stratif‌ied sample of 1686 days across 40 years,

20 Congresses, and 8 presidencies (1961–2000).

270 Matthew N. Beckmann