Contrasting the "bipartisanship" between the Bush and Obama presidencies.

One of the platforms Barack Hussein Obama ran on during his 2008 presidential campaign was "change", more specifically, a different kind of Washington politics. Less than a month after his inauguration, Obama has spearheaded an economic stimulus plan that will allow the government to unleash a fury of spending that the United States has never before seen.

As if the spending that will take place under this bill is not bad enough, the bill will go down as one of the most partisan in history as a mere 3 Republicans out of the 217 (1.38%) in the House and the Senate voted for this bill.

Many Democrats will defend the partisan way in which this bill went down as Republicans not willing to work across the aisle, but I think it is more likely an example of an inflexible Democrat party taking advantage of their new found power while showing an unwillingness to compromise on anything. As we all know, shit tends to run downhill, therefore, I place a large percentage of this blame on BHO and the Democratic leadership of Pelosi and Reid.

I thought it would be interesting to go back in time to one of the biggest pieces of legislation passed during the Bush administration, whether or not to proceed with the invasion of Iraq, to see what kind of bipartisan support this bill received. As you remember, this legislation was very controversial and the vote came at a time when Republicans did not need a single vote by the Democratic party in order for the legislation to succeed, just as the Stimulus bill did not technically need one Republican to achieve the necessary votes.

As you can see from the pie graph below, despite the need for any Democratic vote to support the invasion of Iraq, Democrats in the house voted for it in wide numbers. In my opinion, this vote showed that their was a sense of bipartisanship going on during this period in DC, a period that was governed by the Republicans. It also shows me that concessions for a bill that would allow an invasion, as well as evidence supporting its necessity, were made in a way that convinced many Democrats that it was necessary in order to secure America's safety.



The same thing was also evident in the Senate.



To insinuate the the only reason Republicans did not vote for the stimulus bill is because of partisanship is insane, imo. It is fairly obvious at this point that the Democrats that have hijacked control of our government and are on a spending spree that will not be ended until 2010.