Is bipartisanship doomed?

The hand wringing around this question picks up every few years, and has for as long as I can remember. The latest round of concern stems from the departures of a handful of prominent Senate dealmakers. Sens. Mitt Romney (R-Utah), Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), and Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.) all bowed out of reelection contests in 2024, preferring to leave the Senate for greener pastures.

It is true that Romney, an anti-Donald Trump Republican moderate; Sinema, a conservative former Democrat; and Manchin, a conservative and iconoclastic Democrat, were at the center of a handful of bipartisan deals during their time in office. But worries about a “centrist extinction” or the impossibility of future bipartisan legislation are overwrought.

Start with the fact that bipartisanship is no guarantee of good policy. The Iraq War and America’s mass incarceration system were both products of bipartisan consensus. Both are widely, and rightly, regarded as massive failures: wastes of public money........

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