Matt Compton

Some people think Barack Obama’s message of reaching across the aisle and finding Republican allies for his agenda is a rhetorical tactic — something like Bush’s first term ‘compassionate conservatism’ — which he says but does not mean.

Others believe that this idea of moving past partisanship is a hopelessly-naive, even dangerously-misguided mistake — a chance for the Republicans to take advantage of his potential presidency and undermine his plans.

But it’s important to recognize that this isn’t what Barack Obama believes. This quick, little story from The New Yorker is the perfect example of that.

As James McManus (author of the wonderful Positively Fifth Street) tells it, young, first-term State Senator Obama faced some cold shoulders when he got to the legislature. His first instinct was to make some friends, and he decided to do that with poker:

Along with another freshman senator, Terry Link, Obama started up a regular game in Link’s Springfield living room. It began with five players but quickly grew to eight and developed a long waiting list, which included not only Democrats but Republicans and lobbyists.

That kind of personal, bipartisan bonding has become more difficult in Washington, both because members of Congress have access to cheap flights and feel pressure to return to their districts and because there is so much distrust between the two parties that it simply is not socially acceptable. But historically, that’s exactly the kind of collegial event that kept the lines of communications between the parties open. Famously, Democratic Speaker Tip O’Neil and Republican minority leader Bob Michael were golf partners and drinking buddies. President Reagan courted Democrats at White House dinners and parties, and his relationship with O’Neil was such that he offered to make the Speaker the new ambassador to Ireland when he retired from Congress.

Maybe it is, in fact, impossible to try to build these kinds of personal bridges between the two parties at this day and time. But temperamentally, that’s exactly what Obama in inclined to do, and he’s had some success with it in his personal history.

On Friday, I wrote a post for The Democratic Strategist where I laid out my case against John McCain’s front runner status.

Everything I said then is still true today. McCain still absolutely has to show that he can convince a majority of conservatives to vote for him if he wants to win the Republican nomination for president.

But over the weekend, McCain received endorsements from Sen. Mel Martinez and Gov. Charlie Crist. Endorsements do not always lead to votes, but it’s fairly easy to see how the support of these two men will help in Florida.

Martinez is Cuban-American and that should help McCain with that crucial constituency in the central part of the state. Prior to receiving this nod, he had already been endorsed by all three Cuban-American members of Florida’s U.S. House delegation. McCain has been campaigning in the Cuban community with a narrative about his own time as a prisoner in a Communist country, and that should have some appeal.

Crist is popular everywhere every where in the state. He’s got one of the highest approval ratings of any governor in the country. His backing of McCain should help with rank and file GOP voters. But he’s widely viewed as a moderate, and accordingly shouldn’t help McCain with self-described conservatives.

As others have noted, Rudy Giuliani was banking on a Crist endorsement to put the wind back in the sails of his flagging campaign. Obviously this is another blow, and the mayor can only hope pull a miracle out of all those early votes and absentee ballots that were cast before the start of the year.

Jeb Bush is the one major Florida political figure who has so far stayed quiet. His son, Jeb Bush Jr., has endorsed Mitt Romney, and most observers believe that is where the former governor’s heart is as well. If he were to make a public statement of support for Romney, that would no doubt go a long way toward cutting into McCain’s current momentum.