COLUMBUS, Ohio _ The Republicans-only Senate vote to overhaul the nation's clunky tax system marked further confirmation that in Washington political polarization is the new normal.
The vote on the tax overhaul was particularly telling because it contrasted so vividly with the last time a president and Congress achieved something similar.
In 1986 Republican President Ronald Reagan teamed up with House Speaker Thomas P. "Tip" O'Neill, House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dan Rostenkowski and other Democrats who controlled Congress to enact a once-in-a-generation legislative blockbuster to lower and simplify taxes and eliminate tax breaks.
Reagan, O'Neill, Rostenkowski and the others realized that compromise didn't amount to political sissyhood.
Nobody realized this better than the late Ray C. Bliss, the Akron insurance man who, as national chairman, rebuilt the Republican Party after Barry Goldwater's disastrous 1964 presidential defeat and helped put Republican Richard M. Nixon in the White House in 1968.
Bliss's Republican credentials were unassailable. Starting in the 1930s, he had led efforts to elect Republican mayors, governors, presidents and probably dog catchers.
But Bliss, who died at 73 in 1981, believed in more than the Republican Party. He believed in the two-party system as the best way to provide Americans with stable and productive government.
If the Democratic Party were in danger of extinction, Bliss said he would have come to its aid.
He was too busy breathing life into a comatose Republican Party to do much cooperating with Democrats when he was national chairman from 1965-1969. As Ohio Republican chairman from 1949 to 1965, however, he found ways to promote cooperation.
In 1955, with a Democratic governor and a Republican-controlled legislature, legislation on workers' compensation and unemployment benefits had stalled.
Bliss told business lobbyists, the Republicans' friends, that unless they compromised there would be no legislation and a labor-initiated ballot issue on unemployment compensation would get on the ballot with dire results for them.
He sent a message to union lobbyists, the Democrats' allies, that there would be no increases in workers' compensation or unemployment benefits unless they gave a little.
Compromise legislation was enacted.
Bliss could be a hard-nosed bargainer, but unlike today, he didn't demonize his opponents.
This helped in 1974 when Bliss had returned to Akron and his insurance business.
U.S. Rep. John Seiberling of Akron, a liberal Democrat, was the prime mover behind legislation to create a national park between Akron and Cleveland and Democrat Howard Metzenbaum, the liberals' liberal, was a prime backer in the Senate.
Congress approved creating the park but there was a fear that Republican President Gerald Ford would veto it. At the urging of park backers, Bliss contacted Ford, a friend for years, and urged him to sign the bill and the president did.
Such cooperation was possible because Bliss and Democrats were opponents, not enemies. They respected each other.
The late David Broder, a columnist for the Washington Post, had captured this in 1969 when newly elected Republican President Nixon was forcing Bliss out as national GOP chairman even though Bliss had helped put Nixon in office. At a social event Bliss attended, Broder wrote that there probably were more Democrats than Republicans.
"The Democrats he had just helped turn out of power surrounded him and praised his craftsmanship, while marveling that Nixon would so cavalierly discard such an asset," Broder wrote.
Bliss "was a hero that night, even to the Democrats, because he was much more than a partisan. He was a pro," Broder added.
It's hard to find anybody in Washington these days who meets that definition.
