MR. MITT AND BIPARTISANSHIP

Increasingly, the President is getting zinged for failing on the bipartisanship front. He didn't do enough to bring Republicans to the table, to work out mutually acceptable solutions to the nation's problems. Peggy Noonan, she of the Ronnie Reagan fan club, in October 27's Wall Street Journal makes much of Barack's supposed failure to reach out. In his new book, The Price of Politics, Bob Woodard dwells on Barack's perceived bipartisan inadequacies. Mr. Mitt has been amping-up his own alleged bipartisan abilities. He knows how to sit down with the opposition party and work stuff out.

Well, for the most part the President indeed has been unable to bridge the partisan gaps. But whose fault was it? Maybe a little blame goes to the President and his fellow Democrats. But the party that took the hard line, the no compromise positions over the last four years, was the Republican party. Grover Norquist said no new taxes, nothing that even could be perceived as a tax increase, and the Republican Party jumped.

Nothing is more instructive regarding the current Republican attitude toward compromise than the responses to the question asked during one of the Republican primary debates: would you walk away from a hypothetical deal calling for 10 to 1 spending cuts to tax increases. The eight debaters, including Mr. Mitt, all raised their hands that they would walk away. And this is the attitude Barack is found guilty of not accommodating?!

It would certainly be ironic, or maybe just a perversion of justice, if Mr. Mitt were to win the election on his recently discovered bipartisanship strategy when in fact the major lack of bipartisanship over the last four years has been due to his own party.