Bipartisanship and the 2011 State of the Union Address

The question now is "Does sitting with people 'across the aisle' or of different beliefs then you, create bipartisanship." And just like debating about guns and clips distracts us from the fact that people were shot, and some died, so this distracts us.

If Congress can convince us that they are creating bipartisanship by sitting together at the State of the Union, then we have a very short memory. If we believe this will create bipartisanship then we have already forgotten the vote to repeal health care, a vote that was rather partisan. Not only did it pass the House, which has a Republican majority, by almost complete party lines, but it was introduced in a House that knew it would not get signed by the President. It does appear that republicans are locking down government by trying to pass this repeal so that they can blame it on President Obama in 2012. So what is Mr. Obama's defense to this now locked down government?

To ask people to sit together at the State of the Union, to create a bipartisanship that isn't there. Harry Reid is not going to slap John Boehner on the back and say, "Gotcha!" And have repeal in committee Wednesday morning. John Boehner is not going to apologize for locking up and shutting down the government. There is only one semblance of what the general public considers bipartisanship and this is in President Obama's further move to the center.

The ultimate thing professional politicians want us to believe is that their word 'bipartisanship' is the same thing as the compromise the Founding Fathers had, and it is not. The Founding Fathers did not move to the center more and more the closer it got to election time, the Founding Fathers stood staunch in their beliefs, and the compromise came out in the law. Now we have spineless snakes who want to lie and steal, who want to cheat each other and cut each other down.

So is this State of the Union 'Buddy - Up' system a sign of bipartisanship? Unlikely. More likely it's a great attempt at blinding and pacifying us to the reality of the world around us.

- J. Alexander Fisher