In his Washington Post column today, E.J. Dionne, Jr. writes:

The word “partisanship” is typically accompanied by the word “mindless.” That’s not simply insulting to partisans; it’s also untrue. If we learn nothing else in 2010, can we please finally acknowledge that our partisan divisions are about authentic principles that lead to very different approaches to governing?

That’s a legitimate argument to make; the only problem is that it’s precisely the opposite argument E.J. was making when George W. Bush was in the White House. Back then, partisanship was the bane of our existence. On November 7, 2003, for example, Dionne wrote this:

It’s been a long time since partisanship was as deep as it is now. … Up in heaven, Abe Lincoln must be shaking his head in astonishment. The country he sought to keep united is pulling apart politically, and largely along the same lines that defined Honest Abe’s election victory in 1860.

A few months earlier – on May 30, 2003 – Dionne put it this way:

The rules of policymaking that have applied since the end of World War II are now irrelevant. A narrow Republican majority will work its partisan will no matter what. … Until now, Congress was a forcefully independent branch of government. … With a slim congressional majority, Bush would have been expected to seek genuine compromise – under the old rules. But Washington has become so partisan and Bush is so determined to push through a domestic program based almost entirely on tax cuts for the wealthy that a remarkably radical program is winning.

I have documented Dionne’s Bush-era paeans to bipartisanship and cross-party comity before. When Republicans were in control, he was citing Lincoln and Eisenhower as models of bipartisan governing; partisanship looked pretty mindless back then. Partisan divisions weren’t about “authentic principles that lead to very different approaches to governing”; they were divisive, unnecessary, and harmful to national unity.

What a difference a liberal shift in power can make to a fellow.

This kind of hypocrisy is humorous when it’s so obvious. But it underscores how easily arguments can be distorted in order to advance an ideological worldview — and how often discussions about things like “bipartisanship” are really shadow debates. What is driving E.J. Dionne and many of his colleagues is a commitment to liberalism. As we are seeing, the means to that end — in this case, the merits and demerits of “partisanship” — can be twisted like a pretzel if necessary. That’s worth factoring in as columnists moralize about the virtues of something they once considered a vice.