For all those who believe in the importance of returning bipartisanship and smart policy choices to American government, last night’s caucus was one small step for Iowa and one giant leap for the country. Obama and Huckabee both won big (9 percentage points) by bringing out huge groups of new voters. And they did it not by going to the extremes of their parties and appealing with militant rhetoric, but by talking up their role as unity figures who could move this country forward instead of left or right. Obama’s message was simple and inspired: “we are not a collection of Red States and Blue States, we are the United States of America.” Huckabee’s message was equally powerful: “Americans are looking for a change… to make Americans, once again, more proud to be Americans than just to be Democrats or Republicans.” 

What is striking is not just that Obama and Huckabee won on messages of unity but they even seem to agree that they are fighting largely the same fight, even if they have strong policy differences. Huckabee told Leno on Wednesday night:

“I have a great respect for Barack Obama. I think he’s a person who is trying to do in many ways what I hope I’m trying to do and that is to say let’s quit what I call ‘horizontal politics.’ Everything in this country is not left, right, liberal, conservative, Democrat, Republican. I think the country is looking for somebody who is vertical, who is thinking, ‘Let’s take America up and not down,’ and people will forgive you for being left or right if you go up.”

Karl Rove resigned last summer for “family reasons.” In truth, I think he was smart enough to know that his brand of divisionary politics was reaching a breaking point. Last night will hopefully go down in history as the formal end of the Karl Rove era of American politics. Thank you Iowa for putting that embarrassing time in our history behind us. Listening to Obama and Huckabee last night, I really did feel so proud to be an American.

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