This election cycle has seen both Tom Carper and Michael Castle talking about “Bipartisanship” as if it is some kind of magic elixir that can remedy all of societies ills.

Even Joe M at Merit Bound Alley has drunk the “bipartisanship” kool-aid.

However, I think that there is a difference between the sort of rational compromise and deliberation (principled bipartisanship) that people think of when they think of “bipartisanship” and the craven style of “bipartisanship” that is actually being practiced by the likes of Michael Castle and Tom Carper.

Part of the confusion about “bipartisanship” arises from something called the “avgeraging fallacy”. The averaging fallacy allows for two ideological extremes to be “averaged out” leaving objective truth in the gutter.  Say I’m thinking of a number between one and ten.  Say that number is the number three.  Now I ask two people what they think the number is and “person A” says three  but “person B” says nine.  A sensible bipartisanists would say that the naswer is probably “six”.   It is a perfectly illogical guess, but logical (like objective truth) is a frequent causuality of  cynical bipartisanship.

This logical fallacy runs rampant in the mainstream press. The averaging fallacy usually sounds something like this:

Conservative Position: “Life begins at conception.”

Liberal Position: “Life begins at birth.”

Typical News Report: “Life is generally regarded as beginning sometime after conception and prior to birth.”

The habit of constantly trying to accommodated two “extreme” views leads to the “averaging fallacy”. In addition to the craven press, this logical fallacy is also the refuge o cynical bastards who claim to be political centrist.

As the averaging fallacy is applied to the war in Iraq for example, it is easy to see how the idea of objective truth is raped and abused like a 12 year old Iraqi girl.

Liberal Position: “We need to get out of Iraq now!”

Conservative Position: “We need to stay until we win (eg. forever)!”

Cynical Bipartisanists: “We need to leave Iraq in the next few [insert random time periods here].”

Sadly main stream journalists, even some bloggers, are in the thrall of this type of “bipartisanship” which holds the concept of objective truth in absolute contempt.

Someone from the “other side” who has written eloquently in the concept of “pricipled bipartisanship” is Tyler Nixon. I’ll get more into the concept of principled bipartisan ship in the next installment.