Lamar Alexander is the latest elite to push the golden age of bipartisanship meme:

The No. 3 Republican in the Senate, Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, who attended one session with the president, recalled that in the 1960s, when he was a Congressional aide, Democrats and Republicans worked together on civil rights. He said he saw no possibility of a bipartisan health bill.

“White House officials don’t want one or don’t know how to do one,” Mr. Alexander said.

First, as I’ve noted many times before, the bipartisanship of mid-century was a historical aberration driven by conservative Democrats who remained in their party due to the history of race in the South. After the parties realigned on race, the system returned to the norm of party polarization. As appealing as bipartisanship may seem to centrist pundits and minority party legislators, it came at a very high cost.

In addition, the issues are fundamentally different. The civil rights debate was bipartisan because civil rights split the party coalitions. By contrast, health care is an issue that aligns with the dominant cleavage between the two parties. In a more partisan era, there’s no reason to expect either party to pass major domestic policy legislation in a bipartisan fashion.

Update 11/2 10:36 AM — Matthew Yglesias expresses similar thoughts:

This is very confused, starting with the fact that Alexander started working as a Senate aide in 1967 by which time the main civil rights debate was over. Then any competent observer of American politics should realize that it’s no coincidence that the bipartisanship of the civil rights era vanished in the post-civil rights age. It was the debate over civil rights itself that created the unusual bipartisanship of mid-20th century America.