In Memoriam: Compromise

I teach my students that the most important component of democratic, representative governance is the ability of all sides to compromise. I make this pronouncement with great confidence.

Of course there will be different sides, there will be differing points of view within the governing bodies of these democracies. The ability to compromise, to find common ground, is essential to any government where the differing groups share power. The differing points of view among the representatives reflect the differing views of their constituents, and shouldn’t all of them be equally represented? Even in most modern one-party states compromise is employed in decision making, I’m thinking of the remaining nominally communist states of the world, China, Lao, Vietnam, maybe Cuba. The power elites in these states tolerate diversity of opinion in their ranks and practice consensus decision making. This is not true, perhaps, in North Korea, but their results are not encouraging anyone to emulate them. I can think of a couple of other examples, but the cultures in those areas are so sensitive to criticism that I will refrain rather than offend anyone.

Somehow in Washington compromise has become a dirty word. This is strange. When were two parties more radically different than the Democrats and the Republicans in mid-Twentieth Century America? And yet, they routinely compromised on matters of great importance to the country. Within the two parties there was a range of opinions too, there were Republicans and Democrats who were conservative, moderate or liberal according to their own consciences, reflecting also the diversity in their respective districts. Those days are long gone.

Whatever you have heard from the media, this inability to compromise is not being practiced equally by the two parties in Washington. No, make no mistake, this total inability to get along, this “my way or the highway,” is all coming from the Republican side, and it has been for at least thirty years.

There’s no “both sides do it” argument to be made. There is still a range of opinion in the Democratic Party, there are “Reagan Democrats,” and “Blue Dog Democrats,” a few “Liberal Democrats,” and even a couple of weirdly independent Democrats. The Republicans, on the other hand, have purged all of the ideologically impure members of their party.

Democrats in congress can still be induced to compromise, although the net effect of this is to pull the discourse increasingly to the right. This is because to our modern Republicans, compromise means other politicians doing what the Republicans demand. And it happens sometimes, there are bills that must be passed, spending measures etc.

The most extreme manifestation of this Republican intransigence is seen in the matter of Federal judgeships. They just won’t ratify anybody that President Obama has tried to appoint. This is part of their declared intention to oppose every single thing that Mr. Obama tries to do, to insure that his presidency is seen as a failure. “Declared intention;” they have not made any bones about it, they have plainly stated for three years now that they don’t care who gets hurt, they’re going to oppose everything. Even a few ideas that were theirs in the first place. They paint the Democrats in general, and Mr. Obama in particular, and even the entire Federal government when it suits them, as evil, not just misguided but EVIL, and there is no compromising with EVIL.

It’s too glib to say that this is due to Mr. Obama’s race, although his otherness is definitely something that they use against him. His strange name, his Blackness, these are low hanging fruit for those who would do him political harm. But it must be remembered that the Republicans did these same things to President Clinton, albeit to a lesser extent. Even those were more civil times, even while they were persecuting him on a daily basis for eight years on one trumped up charge after another that never amounted to a hill of beans. Two good presidents by any objective measure, with nothing in their policies or performance to justify the rabid opposition.

This current ideological warfare has led to the death of compromise, and that is a danger to all that we hold dear, or what little there is left of it anyway.