I want to talk about “bipartisanship.” There are good and bad kinds of bipartisanship, and unfortunately the media indiscriminately praise both kinds.

Because progressive values are Maine values, there are many things on which Democrats, Republicans, Greens, Independents, and most other people should agree. When a policy reflects our values and has been shown to improve people’s lives, everyone should support it, regardless of party affiliation. Supporting policies like these is the good kind of bipartisanship.

The minimum wage increase that recently passed in the state House of Representatives deserved bipartisan support, as it would help lift hard-working people out of poverty without lowering employment rates or hurting business. Standish representative, Gary Moore, was one of only three Republicans to vote for it, in an evenly divided body of 151 representatives. Though I thank him for his principled vote, it saddens me that 69 other Republicans placed party and special interests ahead of the public good.

Dirigo Health also should have bipartisan support, because it does a good job of moving us closer to meeting our moral obligation to provide universal health care. Maine has actually lowered the number of residents without health insurance at a time when uninsured rates are skyrocketing nationwide, thanks to the cruel economic policies of George W. Bush and his allies in Congress. However, it’s an election year, and Maine Republicans have decided to assault Dirigo Health for political gain.

Dirigo does need some changes, in part because when it originally passed, it was weakened by the bad kind of bipartisanship.

The bad kind of bipartisanship seeks compromise for compromise’s sake, and seeks a policy somewhere in the “middle” between competing proposals, regardless of how much merit either proposal might have.

The progressive policy of universal, single-payer health care produces the best public health results at the lowest cost. Every other industrialized country besides the United States has realized this, moved past partisan differences, and adopted this approach. Dirigo Health took important steps in this direction, but in an effort to please everyone, it incorporated some very bad ideas from the far right.

I’ll give just one example here. People on the far right believe that insurance companies are more apt to serve the public good than the government would. They therefore wanted the DirigoChoice health plan to be administered through a private insurer, so Anthem was chosen to manage it.

Now we learn from a Maine People’s Alliance report that Anthem has been discouraging callers from signing up for Dirigo, instead recommending other Anthem products that are more profitable for Anthem but are less effective for consumers. No wonder DirigoChoice enrollment is lower than everyone had hoped!

The textbook example of bad bipartisanship is the “Gang of 14.” U.S. Senate Republicans at one point threatened to exercise the “nuclear option.” They wanted to break Senate rules to declare that judicial nomination filibusters were unconstitutional, a laughable claim that none of them actually believed. Did “moderates” like Senators Snowe and Collins decry this shameful threat by their colleagues to violate their oath of office? Did they criticize President Bush for nominating so many radicals? No. They worked out a deal with 12 other Democratic and Republican “moderates,” agreeing not to filibuster several radical nominees, and only to use the filibuster in extreme circumstances. The media adored Snowe and Collins for this substantial surrender to far-right lawlessness in their party. Now Bush’s two Supreme Court picks will probably allow government to start imprisoning doctors for performing abortions.

So there are some things we should all agree on, but incorporating ineffective or immoral ideas to get broader agreement should be condemned, not praised.

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