With the end of the primaries in sight, the Great Polarization has begun. John McCain talks about Barack Obama’s “most liberal” ranking in the Senate, while Hillary Clinton and Obama describe McCain as the 100-year warrior. “We just have fundamental difference in philosophy,” McCain explained Friday in Indiana. “I’m a conservative Republican, and they’re liberal Democrats.”
This is how it will be: Two parties, two different philosophies, and two dramatically different choices. And the differences are striking in many areas. McCain wants to continue the Bush tax cuts, while the Democrats want to end them. McCain wants to continue the war in Iraq, while the Democrats have vowed to begin to end it. McCain wants deal with the healthcare crisis with tax cuts and inflation controls, while the Democrats both favor more government-directed efforts to expand health insurance coverage. I could go on.
But before we all get too far with the red and blue face paint, I wanted to point out one often forgotten fact. On many issues, including some controversial ones, these three senators–McCain, Obama and Clinton–often come down on the same side. Just take a look at what has happened in the current Congress:
All three senators cosponsored S. 223, a bill by Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wisc., to require Senate candidates to file campaign finance information electronically. Out of 100 possible senators, there were 40 cosponsors.
All three senators cosponsored S. 242, a bill by Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., to allow the importation of cheaper prescription drugs. There were 35 cosponors.
All three senators cosponsored S. 280, a bill by Sen. Joseph Lieberman, I-Conn., to establish a cap and trade program for greenhouse gas. There were 11 cosponsors.
All three senators cosponsored S. 311, a bill by Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., to ban horse meat for human consumption. There were 38 cosponsors.
All three senators cosponsored S. 340, a bill by Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., to expand agricultural job opportunities for non-citizens, including a program that lets foreign workers and their families become permanent residents. There were 30 cosponsors.
All three senators cosponsored S. 400, a bill by Sen. John Sununu, R-N.H., to prohibit health insurance companies from dropping dependent children from health plans if the children take a medically-necessary leave of absence from school. There were 21 cosponsors.
All three senators cosponsored S. 625, a bill by Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., to allow the Food and Drug Administration to regulate tobacco products. There were 55 cosponsors.
All three senators cosponsored S. 694, a bill by Clinton, to direct the Department of Transportation to further regulate light trucks to reduce child injury and death. There were 37 cosponsors.
All three senators cosponsored S. 774, a bill by Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill, to provide a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants who were brought to the U.S. as children. There were 26 cosponsors.
Note that for all but one of these bills, McCain, Clinton and Obama belonged to a minority of the Senate that chose to cosponsor. Some of these bills died because of opposition from the Republican leadership or the Bush Administration. All of this is worth remembering the next time you see one of the candidates describing the other party’s nominee as some sort of ideological extremist.
[My thanks to the TIME research department for its help on this.]