I awoke Saturday morning $20 richer than I was on Friday night, but all I wanted to be was $20 poorer. You see, a few days after the November elections, the woman who works the front desk in my office – a sharp young socially-conscious black woman – felt strongly enough that Barack Obama would not run for President that she risked more than an hour of her wages in a bet with me on the proposition. I hate the idea of having to walk in there on Tuesday and take her money, but I come from gambler stock and am genetically mandated to respect the sanctity of a bet. And I’d much rather be opening my wallet than watching Obama spout empty platitudes and tout his reflexive bipartisanship while damaging the brand of the very party under whose banner he is running.

I know all too well the history of Presidential campaigns with regard to the attitudes and demeanor of the candidates. The first cycle I have any memory of is Jimmy Carter vs. Ronald Reagan in 1980. Through experience and later education, I know that Carter – while not the strongest leader – was frank and straightforward with Americans about the problems facing the country and the kind of sacrifice needed to turn them back. Reagan exploited both Carter’s honesty and the public’s desire for happy talk. Consider the actual outcome versus the road not taken as it relates to our current situation:

Reagan wins and fosters a policy of more drilling which does nothing to wean the country from oil addiction, passes absurd tax cuts which explode the deficit, and rolls back decades of environmental regulations wrecking wilderness and inner city alike

-or-

Carter wins and is afforded the time required to reverse the conditions that led to oil shocks and rampant inflation and implement responsible fiscal policy

Happy talk and sunny optimism created disasters on so many fronts that it’s impossible to quantify. Two decades later, Republicans used the same tactic on Al Gore and then Howard Dean, painting them as angry and their own candidate George W. Bush as “hopeful.” Obama it seems has learned that lesson too well. In fact, in the two-and-a-half years since he walked onto the national stage by way of his keynote address at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, Obama has done nothing so much as talk about hope, faith, and yes, optimism. And while of course none of these words stands for anything objectionable, neither are they characteristics that have been shown to make an effective President.

Were this my only criticism of Obama, I could be convinced to keep my mind open to the idea of him as Democratic nominee despite the fact that it furthers the unfortunate precedent of marginalizing candidates who don’t value nebulous intangibles over strong leadership and substantial plans for governing. But my frustration with Obama branding himself as the Hope, Faith, Optimism, and Pixie Stardust for Everyone candidate pales in comparison with the irritation I feel when his stump speeches (or interview responses) turn to phrases like “post-partisan politics” or “a different kind of politics.”

I’ve written at length about the special treatment granted those who use religion as a shield against logic.

The fact that religion has no monopoly on morality and no shortage of sin has not prevented the media from issuing a standing directive to treat politicians and other public figures who cloak themselves in the vernacular of faith as more credible than those who wish to maintain the separation of church and state.

This point is on display daily on cable news, and anyone doubting this need only look back a matter of days for its grandest example yet, the dustup between John Edwards‘ campaign bloggers and William Donohue of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights.

“John Edwards is a decent man who has had his campaign tarnished by two anti-Catholic vulgar trash-talking bigots. He has no choice but to fire them immediately.”

Yet Donohue, a man who dares run an organization with “civil rights” in its name, has a long history of hateful, vulgar trash-talk himself:

“The gay community has yet to apologize to straight people for all the damage that they have done.”

But because Donohue represents a religious organization, his hatespeech is rewarded with television appearances while the targets of his ire either lose their jobs or come close to it. It’s certainly disgusting and high time for it to stop, but at the end of the day, I’m convinced that the majority of Americans, even those who call themselves religious, aren’t persuaded by the caustic rhetoric and McCarthyite tactics Donohue employs. They almost certainly don’t see religion as some kind of trump card, the ace up one side’s sleeve that allows them to win an otherwise even argument.

I’m much less confident that the vast majority of Americans who don’t closely follow politics will be able to spot the false premise – almost universal in the media – that bipartisanship is the same kind of trump as religion is. Debate between two politicians can always be judged by which one more enthusiastically espouses finding the middle ground. To everyday working Americans, compromise is essential. You can’t have a marriage, a family, a friendship, or work in an office without it. So it’s not surprising that the political equivalent of compromise – bipartisanship – carries the same positive connotations. But bipartisanship doesn’t happen in a vacuum, though you wouldn’t know it from media reporting on politics.

“Bipartisanship is another name for date rape,” conservative standard bearer Grover Norquist told the Denver Post. Speaking of Congressional Democrats, Norquist told the Washington Post: “Any farmer will tell you that certain animals run around and are unpleasant, but when they’ve been fixed, then they are happy and sedate. They are contented and cheerful. They don’t go around peeing on the furniture and such.” Norquist of course is a corporate lobbyist, and represents other corporate lobbyists as they seek to influence public policy as it’s made in Congress.

Norquist isn’t kidding. The people who pay his ample salary and fill the campaign funds of Republicans (and a few Democrats) in Congress aren’t looking for the middle ground, nor would they accept anything approaching it. As leaders of publicly traded corporations, their sole mission is to create as much value for their shareholders as possible. And there’s nothing wrong with that in the capitalist system that reigns in this country. But the other half of that equation is regulation, oversight, and the law…the province of government. There is simply no compromising between those who want to shrink the government down to where they can drown it in the bathtub and those who want better schools, healthcare, and worker’s rights. Obama is doing exactly what Bush calls “negotiating with myself.” He’s looking at the landscape for the median between the sides. The problem is that once he has his center, lobbyists like Norquist will force a new median – much closer to the right than Obama’s center. And as long Norquist and his ilk draw breath, bipartisanship is dead. Learn to deal.

Yet Obama constantly repeats the word bipartisan as if the magical solution to the problems we face is somehow averaging the positions between the two sides. Funny, in his three years on the national scene, I’ve never heard him say a word about how this is supposed to work. Are we talking about splitting the difference on every issue, or is each side supposed to sacrifice half of their principles in order to get their way the other half? How do you come to a bipartisan resolution on abortion if the one we have now (don’t want one? don’t get one) isn’t enough? What is the halfway point between the Darwinian market-worshipers and those who want the basic services the state has been providing since the New Deal? And why would the answer to any of these questions automatically be a better policy than the respective lines in the sand drawn by either side? There is nothing inherently good about reflexive centrism any more than there is about reflexive partisanship, left or right. I’d love to see a campaign that pits a Democrat pushing Democratic ideas against a Republican pushing Republican ideas because I agree with former President Clinton that “Our way works better.” If Obama doesn’t think that’s the case, he shouldn’t be running as a Democrat. If he wants to “transcend partisan politics” he shouldn’t be running as a Democrat.

I’ll collect on my bet, but the money is going directly to someone who has already decided that it’s more important to fight for what’s right than to be everybody’s buddy.