The four former Senate leaders know, more than almost anyone else, how difficult it is to find such agreement. So they are choosing their targets with care. The Iraq war is not on the agenda. They have launched a national security initiative, to be headed by retired Gen. Jim Jones, a former NATO supreme allied commander. But the emphasis will be on nonmilitary applications of American power and influence.

They may offer “common ground” approaches to other problems as well. Mitchell, for example, thinks they could synthesize the best suggestions on improving port security and perhaps take on part of the challenge of the dysfunctional health-care system. ~David Broder

Call Unity08–I predict a groundswell of support for a Baker-Daschle or Dole-Mitchell ticket!  Wouldn’t that be something to see?  Can you feel the excitement?  I sure can.  As Yglesias has disparagingly put it:

I’m no Senator, but here’s my commitment to Broder and to everyone out there in the grant-writing community. If you want to give me “a staff of 20 and a budget of $7 million a year” I will gladly put partisanship aside and reach across the aisle for solutions. Yes, yes, it’s true — I’m that selfless.

The really impressive part about this senatorial quartet is how they have committed to finding common ground only on those issues where people aren’t terribly divided.  They wouldn’t want to have find a compromise on anything so divisive–and important–as the war, because that might show their tired invocation of bipartisanship to be a waste of everybody’s time.  By focusing on all those things that aren’t terribly controversial, the quartet may succeed in forging a consensus, but in most cases it will simply be restating a consensus that probably already exists.  The main divisions between (and within) the parties today are not over “nonmilitary applications” of power and influence, but very specifically over military applications.  It is worse than useless to have a group dedicated to finding common ground on issues where there is scant division.  It would be like tackling the sharp divide over abortion by talking about how to improve pre-natal care.  It would be like addressing immigration reform by passing a resolution marking Cinco de Mayo.  They find “common ground” by talking about a completely different subject.  That is what you get with this idolatry of bipartisanship: nothing of any value.