Mehlman and Obama Not Mortal Enemies

Washington Whispers reveals the shocking news that at least one Democrat and one Republican in Washington don’t hate one another.

News flash! Washington’s killer partisanship has somehow skipped over two prominent political newbies. What’s more, the Capitol Hill odd couple dare to keep their friendship alive. Horrors! Just when you thought bipartisanship was dead, along comes rookie Democratic Sen. Barack Obama and newly minted Republican Party Chairman Ken Mehlman . Seems the two were pals at Harvard Law School in the early 1990s and are still friendly today. Insiders tell us that they traded notes during the 2004 election, when Mehlman managed the Bush-Cheney re-election, and have talked since Election Day. And now they’re planning a symbolic dinner at Washington’s La Colline, famed for its Dover sole.

Yikes. If this qualifies as news, we’re more divided than I thought. The ad copy for Michael Barone’s The Almanac of American Politics, 2006 is similarly grim: “American politics has devolved into a grim battle between two approximately equal-size armies in a take-no-prisoners culture war. . . .” It sounds like the lead-in to Ken Burns’ Civil War docudrama or the second season of Babylon 5.

both via Political Wire

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James Joyner
About James Joyner
James Joyner is Professor and Department Head of Security Studies at Marine Corps University's Command and Staff College. He's a former Army officer and Desert Storm veteran. Views expressed here are his own. Follow James on Twitter @DrJJoyner.

Comments

  1. McGehee says:

    If this qualifies as news, we’re more divided than I thought.

    Well, depends on how you define “news.” In the real world, “dog bites man” can theoretically qualify as news precisely becase editors have been spiking “dog bites man” stories for years because “they don’t qualify as news.”