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Sixty years ago, a Republican senator named Everett Dirksen convinced his party to support the top legislative priority for the Democrats. The bill was the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which would outlaw Jim Crow segregation and employment discrimination based on race (among other factors). Southern senators from both parties were filibustering the bill, so Senate Democrats needed Republican votes to keep the legislation moving. Dirksen wrote amendments to the bill and challenged his fellow Republicans to live up to America’s founding creeds.
“Stronger than all the armies is an idea whose time has come,” he told them, paraphrasing Victor Hugo in a speech that June [ [link removed] ]. “The time has come for equality of opportunity in sharing in government, in education, and in employment.” Moments later, 27 Republicans and 44 Democrats voted to end the filibuster and move the bill forward.
It was a bold, bipartisan move that today would get Dirksen run out of D.C. like a basketball player who scored an assist for the rival team.
Bipartisanship Abandoned
I delved into Dirksen’s history this spring because the journalist in me is a sucker for anniversary years ending in zero or five, and I’ve always been curious about how the bipartisan Civil Rights Act of 1964 came to be. But as I continued researching, events on Capitol Hill showed just how much Dirksen’s style of bipartisan lawmaking has fallen out of fashion.
Today on the Republican side, House Speaker Mike Johnson is facing a threat to oust him [ [link removed] ] from his leadership role because he cooperated with Democrats on a spending bill—hardly six months after Kevin McCarthy was cast out for the same sin. Meanwhile, Wisconsin’s Mike Gallagher is resigning early [ [link removed] ] because of the way other Republicans reacted to his vote against impeaching Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas. In the Senate, Mitt Romney is retiring after his entire term has been defined by controversy for his anti-Trump stance.
Mavericks and moderates across the aisle do not fare better. For years, Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema attracted vitriol from the left whenever they brokered deals with Republicans. Now they’re both leaving the Senate, and Manchin ruled out a centrist run for the presidency. Sinema, an independent since 2022, said [ [link removed] ], “I believe in my approach, but it’s not what America wants right now.”
The retreat from bipartisanship punishes everyday Americans, too, as problems become political footballs. Donald Trump urged Republicans to reject a border security deal partly because fixing the border while Joe Biden is in the White House would be “a gift to the radical left Democrats.” [ [link removed] ] Four years ago, Democrats rushed to close schools, restaurants and churches, then ran ads blaming Trump [ [link removed] ] for the pain, even as he advocated for shutdowns to end [ [link removed] ].
Defining Bipartisanship
Some people might accuse me of writing bipartisanship’s obituary while it’s still alive, well and working. They do have a point: More than 90% [ [link removed] ] of legislation that passed the Senate in recent years received votes from both parties, including major laws such as the First Step Act, which initiated criminal justice reforms in 2018, and the Respect for Marriage Act, which codified same-sex marriage rights in 2022.
But having votes from both parties is no surprise when neither party has more than a razor-thin majority. A successful bill would almost always need at least a handful of votes from across the aisle. Also, these classic bipartisan bills were broadly popular. When more than 50% [ [link removed] ] of Republicans support same-sex marriage, it makes sense that 39 Republicans in the House (only about 18% of the Republican Conference at the time) would support the Respect for Marriage Act.
Only 23 bills [ [link removed] ] became law in 2023, though, most of them mundane and uncontroversial. We should not measure bipartisanship by how often Democrats and Republicans happen to agree, but how they act when they disagree.
Courageous Bipartisanship
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 involved a different kind of bipartisanship requiring real compromise and courage. Championed by Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, it provoked stiff opposition from Southern senators from both parties.
Dirksen was no weak-kneed RINO [ [link removed] ] who bowed to Democratic wishes. When President Johnson told reporters [ [link removed] ] he wanted to “keep free from mudslinging and petty politics,” Dirksen replied [ [link removed] ], “There is never a truce in politics. … Of course you don’t use sponges to throw at somebody when you go into that kind of contest.” He spoke out against Johnson’s anti-poverty programs and Vietnam policy. He endorsed Barry Goldwater for president in 1964.
Dirksen even disliked the Civil Rights Act at first because it would have expanded the federal government’s enforcement powers. But he was a longtime supporter of civil rights, and he knew the bill needed his support. He studied the bill for weeks and looked for compromises. In a radio address, he told constituents [ [link removed] ], “I must be very careful about this to make sure that what we do is practical, that it is workable, that it is equitable and that it is fair to all people.”
On April 16, 1964, Dirksen introduced numerous amendments [ [link removed] ] that drew criticism from both supporters and opponents of the bill. But he convinced all but six senators in his party to support the legislation.
Dirksen’s work to pass the bill essentially handed an election-year legislative victory to a Democratic president, likely an unforgivable sin on Capitol Hill today. Critics at the time said that he did a “disservice” to his party. One reporter quipped that Dirksen would never win over Black voters in his home state of Illinois. Dirksen replied [ [link removed] ] that votes weren’t the point: “Sometime you have to do something for your country.”
That is bipartisanship: the willingness “to do something for your country,” even when it costs you or your party politically. And despite its low status today, bipartisanship can make a comeback. Organizations such as More in Common and Braver Angels are doing significant work to help Americans discover areas of agreement and compromise. If those ideas catch on, we may see voters send more politicians like Dirksen to Washington. But until then, it looks as though bipartisanship is an idea whose time has come and gone.

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