Well, folks. It appears as though the dream ticket just isn't going to work out. It's a shame, though, because Americans both want and need an end to the bitter partisanship that is dividing the country, and this unique pairing, though not a panacea, could have helped to begin the healing process in the country.

The partisanship today is just about as bad as it's ever been. I think a lot of this comes from the fact that parties are now divided on ideological lines, unlike before when there was much more room for compromise. As Senator Arlen Specter said in an interview with The New Yorker for its April 12, 2004 issue,

"When I came to the Senate, we had a lot of members of the Wednesday Club"-a weekly gathering of Republican moderates. "You had Lowell Weicker, you had Bob Stafford, you had Bob Packwood, you had Mark Hatfield, you had [John] Chafee, you had John Danforth, you had Jim Jeffords, you had John Heinz. Now there are only a few of us. And it's important. When Joe Biden needs a co-sponsor, he comes to Arlen Specter. That kind of balance is really important for the country. It's more than the soul of the Republican Party; it's to have some balance within the Party and within the two-party system." It's this paucity of liberal Republicans and conservative Democrats, I believe, that it the main cause of a lot of the problems we are facing as a nation today.

When the current President ran as a "unifier, not a divider," many Americans embraced his candidacy in the hope that the relations inside the Congress and between the Exectutive and Legislative branches would improve. However, the President has chosen to rely solely on his base and his party for support, rarely if ever crossing the aisle for Democratic support. The situation has even become horrible within the Senate, a body that usually shied away from such rancour. Whereas former Republican Leaders Bob Dole and even Trent Lott tried to keep relations with the Democrats as friendly as possible, new Majority Leader Bill Frist has gone out of his way to create as much tension as possible, most notably during his 30-hour filibuster and his campaigning against Tom Daschle in South Dakota (no Senate leader had ever before campaigned against the other party's leader in his home state).

If there is any sign of hope now that Kerry-McCain appears to be finished (as if it could have ever happened in the first place), it is surprisingly coming from the country's "Left Coast." Although I thought the candidacy of Arnold Schwarzenegger was a sham a few months ago and that he would become a ineffective leader of the world's sixth largest economy if elected, the "Governator" is creating a model of leadership that could begin to ease the partisan divide in this country.

Two recent articles--one in The Economist and the other on Salon.com--praise the California Governor as the model for bipartisanship. They are both worth noting.

Lexington writes in this week's edition of The Economist about Arnold's ability to work with members of the other party. In comparing the him to President Bush, Lexington writes,

"The big difference is in their practice of politics. Whereas both pledged in their election campaigns to 'reach across the aisle' to their Democratic opponents, it is only the governor who has followed through. Where Mr Bush clings to his ideological base, Mr Schwarzenegger not only has friends and relations who are Democrats but knows how to work with them, too."

The author is entirely correct in his hypothesis. What is more, he implies that the key to success in bridging relationships is actually trying to do it.

Salon similarly writes,

"He is also interested -- maybe genuinely, maybe out of necessity -- in reaching across the political aisle. While the Bush administration takes a 'you're with us or you're against us' approach to both foreign and domestic policy, Schwarzenegger has reached out -- sometimes with carrots, sometimes with sticks -- to interest groups and the Democrats who control the state Legislature."

...

"'Schwarzenegger is more like the real Reagan than the Reagan of legend,' says Jack Pitney, a former Republican National Committee staffer who is now a government professor at California's Claremont McKenna College. 'The real Reagan was a pragmatist and a compromiser in just the way Schwarzenegger is.'"

Although I didn't vote for him (I go to school in Cah-lee-four-knee-uh, but wasn't registered there at the time) I have to hand it to Arnold. He has been a great success, seeing astronomical approval ratings, and I believe this all stems from the fact that he ran as a moderate and he is also governing as a moderate. By crossing the aisle to work with Democrats, he is beginning the healing process in this nation. If only leaders on the national level could do the same thing...

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So what am I trying to get at with this slightly jumbled post?

I think the key is that we need to begin moving back to the center as a nation, willing to elect moderates in both parties, but also liberal Republicans and conservative Democrats. Perhaps Arnold should be our model. Too bad the Constitution prohibits him from running for president...