A lot of people have been writing of late about the meaninglessness of Michael Bloomberg's empty denunciations of partisanship and the predictable embrace of them by Beltway elites. But Jon Chait really nails it:

"Any successful elected executive knows that real results are more important than partisan battles and that good ideas should take precedence over rigid adherence to any particular political ideology." So declared New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg upon renouncing his membership in the GOP last week. The problem, of course, is that people don't agree on what "real results" or "good ideas" are. Cutting taxes? Raising taxes? Funding stem-cell research? Banning stem-cell research? This is exactly why we have partisan battles in the first place.

You would think that anybody who failed to grasp this would be urged to study a high school civics textbook. Instead, Bloomberg is being urged to run for president and lauded for his statesmanship.

Bloomberg has thus become the most prominent example of what you could call partisanship scolds. These are people who believe that disagreement is the central problem in U.S. politics, that both parties are to blame in equal measure, and that rejecting party ties or ideology is synonymous with the demonstration of virtue. While partisanship scolds believe that they stand in bold contrast to Washington, they are probably more heavily represented among the Beltway elite than any other demographic.

This puts me in mind of one of the more irksome formulations of this sort, one frequently bandied about by Joe Lieberman: The notion that we should put the good of "country before party." Well, duh. Thing is, people who are partisans tend to think that the success of their party is the best way to ensure the success of the country. That's what makes them partisans in the first place.

There's a very simple reason that the partisanship scolds don't understand this: They're generally not interested in the actual policies being advocated by the folks they revere as nonpartisan heroes. Let's take David Broder as an example, since he's probably the ultimate partisanship scold. It's very clear from his paeans to various nonpartisan demigods such as Joe Lieberman that what Lieberman is actually advocatinghe isn't particularly interested in what Lieberman is actually advocating.

He's primarily interested in the theatrics of independence. In this sense, it's actually the partisanship scolds who are putting the empty idea of nonpartisanship before country.