Politics & Power Quote by Richard V. Allen

Allen is wielding bipartisanship less as a moral ideal than as a measuring stick that conveniently flatters his side. By framing Reagan and Bush as builders of “a new team,” he casts Republican administrations as naturally inclusive managers, then positions Clinton as the outlier who “failed to reach out.” The language is managerial on purpose: “team” softens the hard realities of patronage, ideological combat, and institutional leverage into something that sounds like common-sense HR. It’s a subtle way of saying: we governed like adults; they governed like partisans.

The subtext is an argument about legitimacy. “Reach out” implies not just courtesy but an obligation to share power after an election, as if governing is a coalition by default rather than a mandate with constraints. The “with but one exception” aside is doing quiet work, signaling the author’s awareness that the historical record is messier while refusing to litigate it. That ellipsis invites the reader to accept his authority rather than demand specifics.

Context matters: Allen, a Republican national security figure from the Reagan orbit, is defending a political culture that prizes cross-party credibility when it serves stability and elite consensus, especially on foreign policy and appointments. The dig at Clinton also echoes the 1990s storyline that Democrats, newly ascendant after the Cold War, overread their moment and underestimated the organizational aggression of Gingrich-era Republicans. “Paid a political price” is the kicker: not a critique of governance outcomes, but a warning about power. In Allen’s telling, exclusion isn’t just ungentlemanly; it’s tactically stupid.