Before he launched the war on Iraq, he got Democratic Sens. Tom Daschle, Harry Reid, Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, John Edwards and Chris Dodd to give him a blank check. As the Republican Establishment signed on to Clinton's trade deals, the Democratic Establishment signed on to Bush's war.
Dissenters were denounced, once again, as isolationists.
How did that big deal turn out?
It cost us 4,400 dead, 35,000 wounded and $1 trillion, with 100,000 Iraqi dead and half a million widows and orphans. Four million Iraqis have been uprooted from their homes, half fleeing to foreign lands. Half of these exiles are Christians whose communities, there since the time of Christ, are dying, as Islamists assume they are allies of the Crusaders that attacked their country.
And those weapons of mass destruction that the Democratic leadership authorized Bush to find and destroy? They did not exist.
Then there was the George Bush-Teddy Kennedy No Child Left Behind deal, which doubled spending at the Department of Education.
How did that work out?
Hundreds of billions sunk, test scores stagnant or dropping and teachers caught cheating on behalf of students to get test scores back up to keep the NCLB money flowing.
The racial gap endures, and though we spend more per capita on education than any nation save Luxembourg, we are getting creamed in international competition by East Asians and Europeans.
The response to this disaster?
"We need bipartisan agreement to invest more in education."
Did not Albert Einstein define insanity as doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting a different result? Why would we give more money to an education establishment that has consumed the wealth of an empire and failed us for 40 years?
Bipartisan big deals gave us Vietnam, Iraq, the Reagan and Bush 1 tax hikes, NAFTA, GATT, the WTO, No Child Left Behind and prescription drug benefits under Medicare. Bipartisan big deals led America to the brink of bankruptcy.
When JFK wrote "Profiles in Courage," it was not about the dealmakers like LBJ, but the men who stood apart and stood alone for what was right.