Partisan

BIPARTISANSHIP IS like the weather. Everyone (in politics) talks about it. Nobody does anything about it. In Annapolis these days, people also talk about "divided government." Compromise, the word or deed, is hardly ever heard. It's a vocabulary lesson of value now because issues of great significance can be clarified (at best) or distorted (at worst) when the partisan instinct prevails. Is it partisanship to oppose any sort of broad-based tax increase - the position currently advanced by the Republicans in Annapolis?

A partisan bickering match broke out in Maryland politics Wednesday over whether it's outrageous or fair game to put a certain photo of Lt. Gov. Anthony G. Brown and Howard County Executive Ken Ulman flexing their biceps into an attack ad. Republican Larry Hogan, fresh of a primary victory Tuesday, released an Internet ad mocking Brown's record in a 40-second spot that mimics those popular “Most Interesting Man in the World” ads for Dos Equis...

WASHINGTON - As political scandals go, this one should have been Big News. It had all the makings: a leaked document, arrogant staff and a nefarious plot to exploit national security for partisan advantage. But somehow, the media more or less ignored the story behind a memo advocating partisan guerrilla warfare on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence last week penned by some nameless Democratic staff member. The committee is investigating whether intelligence leading up to the war in Iraq was faulty and whether the administration in any way attempted to skew intelligence to favor its own desire to wage war. The issue is as sensitive and highly charged a topic imaginable in the increasingly politically polarized Congress.

Hillary Clinton hasn't even thrown her hat into the 2016 presidential ring yet, but Republican tremors over the very thought have already unleashed red flares about her age and health that question her qualifications for the office. It's an old partisan tactic, this time invoked by Karl Rove - the man who brought you George W. Bush, who with neither his age nor his health impeding his election arguably went on to be the worst American president to date with his Iraq invasion in 2003.

WASHINGTON -- It is no secret to anyone with even minimal street smarts that the White House has been politically inept in its handling of the Whitewater controversy. But there is also a legitimate question about whether the Republicans may be overplaying their hand.On the face of it, the Republican demands for congressional inquiries have an obvious legitimacy. There is no reason the appointment of special counsel Robert Fiske should dilute the responsibilities of Congress for oversight.

WASHINGTON -- Almost 20 years ago, during a congressional recess early in 1974, a reporter went to Peoria to spend a few days with Rep. Robert Michel. The idea was to find out how voters in a quintessentially Republican district were feeling about the embattled Republican president, Richard M. Nixon.Michel, already a member of the Republican leadership of the House of Representatives, was at that point a staunch defender of Nixon.But Michel didn't try to sugarcoat it. On the contrary, he allowed the reporter to accompany him to one meeting after another with his constituents.

The infantile food fight taking place in Congress in recent days over which partisan, nonbinding Iraq resolution would get a vote is nothing short of a national embarrassment. Worse, it is a slap in the face to the troops in harm's way who are desperately looking for adult leadership from those who helped send them there. Be it the House, the Senate or the White House, all too often, the arguments now being framed with regard to Iraq are being offered based on lowest-common-denominator, partisan self-interest.

The idea that a huge partisan divide separates Democrats from Republicans in the Maryland General Assembly seemed absurd at the Howard County Chamber of Commerce's annual legislative wrap-up discussion last week. The Senate's majority and minority leaders - Republican Allan H. Kittleman and Democrat Edward J. Kasemeyer - blew rhetorical kisses at each other, and Del. James E. Malone Jr., a Democrat, spoke of his close relations with at least one conservative county Republican. "Warren Miller is one of my best friends in Annapolis," Malone said at the breakfast event at the Sheraton Hotel in Columbia, noting that conservative and moderate Democrats often work together with the vastly outnumbered Republicans.

The report issued last week by the Justice Department's inspector general only confirmed what many had long suspected: Since 2002, the Bush administration has worked to deliberately undermine the department's independence from political meddling by packing it with conservative ideologues. The report said administration officials trampled the department's long-standing policy of merit-based recruiting in favor of political litmus tests that systematically weeded out Democrats and liberals.

WASHINGTON - The 30 companies that own most of the dirtiest power plants in the country, and their trade association, have raised $6.6 million for President Bush and the Republican National Committee since 1999, and were given relief from pollution regulations that would have cost them billions of dollars, according to a new analysis. Ten utility industry officials were so good at fund raising for the president that they were named Rangers or Pioneers by his campaign for bringing in at least $200,000 or $100,000, respectively, according to the analysis by Public Citizen, a consumer advocacy group, and the Environmental Integrity Project, an environmental watchdog organization.

Nobody brings out the Republican long knives quite like Hillary Clinton does, and this week, Comedy Central's Jon Stewart coined the perfect name for it: "Brainghazi. " It's the merging of the umpteenth investigation of Benghazi with the latest slander to be directed her way, the suggestion by Republican strategist Karl Rove that she's suffered brain damage. Mr. Rove tried to walk back that little smear on Tuesday after a New York Post headline to that effect set the Internet on fire.

The proverbial "revolving door" in Washington politics is nothing new. Everyone knows it happens. Everyone hates it. And yet it continues unchecked. What is new, however, is that the interconnected web of private sector and bureaucratic personnel has moved beyond just Wall Street and financial regulators and committees. It's now expanded into federal regulatory agencies arguably wielding far greater power to act unilaterally: the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB)

As President Obama embarks on his sixth year in the Oval Office, he does so with a greater reality of the political equation he faces, as clearly demonstrated the other night in his State of the Union address. The freshman chief executive five years ago entered the office expressly committed to change the way Washington worked. But now he's acknowledged to Congress and the nation that fundamental change was an illusion. As long as pivotal elements in the legislative branch are dug in against his aspirations for legislative cooperation, Mr. Obama has admitted, he has to rely on his own executive powers and persuasion.

I read with interest the recent article "Carroll conservatives clash with Van Hollen" (Nov. 12). I could readily relate to Carroll County Republican Bill Schroeder's statement - "We have nothing in common with Montgomery County - absolutely nothing" - concerning his representative, Chris Van Hollen, a Democrat who lives in and primarily represents Montgomery Co. And, according to the article, that county "accounts for most of the district's population....

The Obamacare/government funding debacle has again focused the country's attention on the considerable differences between the Obama Democrats and Boehner Republicans. But one of the primary misunderstandings regarding this latest titanic struggle concerns the popular but misplaced notion that Congress is dysfunctional because of politics. I refer to the popular caricature of Republicans and Democrats sitting around all day with nothing to do other than plot evil deeds against each other.

A striking contrast between the 1963 March on Washington and Wednesday's 50th anniversary celebration of it (and of Martin Luther King's historic "I have a dream" speech) was the visible unity and nonpartisanship of the first and the scarcity of both in the second. In the voices the other day of three Democratic presidents -- Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama -- and of not a single prominent Republican leader, past or present, the program seemed at times more a self-congratulatory Democratic rally.

Despite vows last year to avoid partisan political fights, a nasty one has developed between Howard County's two Republican councilmen and Democratic County Executive James N. Robey that threatens prospects for future cooperation. The fight started during Friday's voting session on the budget when the council's two Republicans said they felt Robey misled them during budget negotiations and went back on his word several times. "It's trust, a lack of trust," said Ellicott City Republican Christopher J. Merdon after the meeting in which the council eventually approved the $755 million budget for the next fiscal year.

WASHINGTON - One thing seems certain about the outcome of the presidential race: On Nov. 3, the day after Election Day, close to half of the voting public will wake up angry. An electorate that was as bitterly divided as it was evenly divided in 2000 will go to the polls again in one month, even more polarized than it was four years ago. Like denizens of parallel universes, voters are split over hotly emotional issues like the war in Iraq and gay rights, and clinging to increasingly ideological parties that are moving further and further apart.

Letter writer Joe Everett made a valid point about the Voting Rights Act but failed to see the bigger picture and the totally inequitable situation that needs to be addressed ("Where was the outcry when Md. voters were harmed?" June 27). In the last federal election, more people voted for Democratic congressional candidates than for Republicans. Yet Republicans came away with 33 more seats in the U.S. House of Representatives and a big, unwarranted majority. Decades of gerrymandering by Republican governors in red states has had the perverse effect of minimizing the political clout of urban areas and their voters.

Viewers of the television political talk shows may have noticed a phenomenon in the afterbirth of the last presidential election. High-powered consultants from both campaigns have invaded the studios as panelists, chewing over the political events of the day beside career reporters and analysts who had recently been covering them. From the winning Obama team, chief campaign strategists David Axelrod and David Plouffe and deputy Stephanie Cutter have signed with such shows, as have Kevin Madden of the Romney campaign and other Republicans.