Defining 'Post-Partisan'

As Michael Gerson and David Frum learned, staking claim to a buzzword or phrase is often more trouble than it's worth. But since it's increasingly being bandied about -- and since I've already taken the ribbing from colleagues on the subject -- I can't resist planting the "post-partisan" flag.

I certainly wasn't the first to coin the term "post-partisan." I've seen scattered mentions from the 1990s, and this guy has owned postpartisan.com since at least 2001. But I was the one who slapped the label on the New America Foundation, shortly after joining the think tank in early 2006. And given New America's work with Arnold Schwarzenegger on healthcare and other issues, I'm reasonably confident the Governor's favorite new phrase was borrowed from us.

Schwarzenegger's January inaugural address got the media using the term, and Michael Bloomberg's recent announcement seems to have kicked "post-partisan" into heavy rotation.

All of which begs the question, "So What?"
After all, it's not like it's a new term. And even if it was, "post-partisan" is not likely to generate the licensing $$$ that Pat Riley's "three-peat" has.

For me, though, the issue is one of definition. (As one co-worker said: "'Post-partisan?' Is that like 'post-mortem,' or 'post-partum?'") "Post-partisan" can easily be seen as just a better-sounding stand-in for "non-partisan," much in the way that most liberals have abandoned that label for "progressive." But as I explained to a New America supporter last November:

One might argue that "non-partisan" is a clearer description than "post-partisan," and that term is accurate so far as it goes: New America works very hard to keep both parties at arm's length. We're happy to work with both Republicans and Democrats on a given issue, but do not want to be seen as an extension of either party the way many think tanks are.

"Non-partisan," however, implies a sort of split-the-difference neutrality, where balance often seems more important than finding good answers to hard questions. "Post-partisan," on the other hand, reflects our view that both major parties are fundamentally flawed, and that we need to look beyond the today's left-right, Dem-GOP structures and stereotypes if we're to have any chance of solving the most serious public policy challenges.

That's not to say that parties don't matter, of course. (The fact that today's United States is a post-industrial nation, after all, doesn't mean we no longer have industry and manufacturing.) But we does mean that we can't rely entirely on 19th- and 20th-century politics to tackle 21st-century problems. So New America is committed to crafting solutions and ideas without regard to party orthodoxy, and working with (or angering, in some cases!) politicians from across the political spectrum to bring truly fresh ideas back into the public debate.

So there you have it: One man's take on what it means to be post-partisan. (Whether Bill Bradley sees it the same way, of course, is an open question.)