The Holy Grail of politics, at least among old-timers, is a kind of gentlemanly, courteous system in which folks agree to disagree, compromise and work together toward the common good, while holding on to their principles.

The harsh reality, however, is that this kind of politics, particularly in Washington, has given way to a scorched-earth approach where the only victory is a complete victory.

Locally, there is increasing evidence that a similar scorched-earth policy is taking hold between our Republican governor, Linda Lingle, and the Democrats who run the state Legislature. There is a growing sense of a testy, if not acrimonious, relationship between the two branches of government that does not look to get much better any time soon.

The most current example is the back-and-forth between Lingle and the Legislature over her vetoes of a couple of dozen bills and the Legislature's efforts to override those vetoes.

Veto and override: That's a classic example of political competition. And there's nothing wrong with it. But this last episode had a particularly harsh tone to it. Lingle complained in rather stark terms about the Legislature's veto overrides, saying the Legislature "placed partisan politics ahead of the well-being of the people it is supposed to serve."

In other words, lawmakers were more interested in a gubernatorial smackdown than in the substance of the work they were doing.

Lingle had earlier called on legislators to sit down with her administration and work cooperatively to cure flaws in many of the bills she was compelled to veto.

But if the governor was truly interested in compromise, lawmakers responded, why didn't she come down and talk with them rather than issuing her "can't-we-all-get-along" missive to the the news media just days before the veto-override session was scheduled to begin?

It was, they sniffed, more of a PR stunt than a genuine attempt to achieve compromise.

At one level, political competition can be good. But it can also be destructive if it becomes the point of the game.

In Washington, a quartet of grand old men of politics, former Sens. Howard Baker, George Mitchell, Tom Daschle and Bob Dole, have formed a new group called the "Bipartisan Policy Center." The goal of the group is to find common ground between the parties on major policy challenges. The idea is that you do not give up your core beliefs, but rather that you work to pursue those beliefs in cooperation with others.

Is there room for this kind of approach in Hawai'i, or are we headed toward partisan deadlock?

Reach Jerry Burris at jburris@honoluluadvertiser.com.