Postpartisan

Post-partisanship is an approach to dispute resolution between political factions that emphasizes compromise and collaboration over political ideology and party discipline. It does not imply neutrality. From 2000-2007, there were virtually no online media references to the term "post-partisan". Media and Web references to the term are growing rapidly as the concept takes hold among policy-makers.The New York Times has attributed an oblique reference to post-partisan idealism in a statement by US President Thomas Jefferson, when he declared in his inaugural address in 1801: "We are all Republicans, we are all Federalists."

Post-partisanship and the 2008 US Presidential election

Often invoked by supporters of both 2008 US presidential candidates Barack Obama and John McCain, its modern renaissance dates back to a Los Angeles conference hosted June 18–19, 2007, by the USC Annenberg School for Communication, to "explore ways to improve political dialogue and decision making."

William Safire, the late New York Times language maven, finds the first media reference to post-partisanship in a February 1976 article in the Times about a "disenchanted electorate" that preceded the Ford-Carter campaign: "It is within the fluid and independent middle," he quotes Christopher Lydon as saying, "that could shape new parties, realign the old ones or extend the history of erosion into a new 'post-partisan' era" (Safire 2008: 22).