The Great Divide

I had the great privilege of attending a ceremony recently in Washington, D.C. at which Olympia Snowe was given the 2013 Paul H. Douglas Award for Ethics in Government. (The late Paul H. Douglas, a man of strong moral convictions, a liberal who championed fiscal conservatism, and an ardent crusader for civil rights in the mid-twentieth century, was once described by the Rev. Martin Luther King as “the greatest of all the Senators”.) Senator Snowe had a long and distinguished career, serving in both houses of the U.S. Congress. As I listened to the speeches of some of her peers in government, along with her own acceptance speech, I could perceive a common theme that emerged among them. This was that Senator Snowe, and others like her, were able to achieve great things in government because they were willing to work with members of the opposite political party to achieve important goals. “Compromise” was a word that came up more than once during the ceremony, and it was not used in a pejorative sense. Rather, it described the ability of Snowe and other legislators to make small sacrifices in return for significant gains: pieces of legislation that – while not entirely satisfying the original objectives of either party –nevertheless represented tangible and important contributions to the nation that could find support in both parties.

How different things seem now, in a Congress where “compromise” has become a dirty word. Factions regularly prefer to hold the entire government hostage through their intransigence in such important matters as long-term national debt reduction, rather than work with elements in both parties to affect a workable compromise. In a recent marathon 21-hour speech, a senator dredged up the name of Neville Chamberlain, suggesting that to compromise with his political opposition on a budget bill was comparable to that British prime minister’s policy of appeasement with Adolph Hitler.

When did “compromise” become such an ugly word in politics? It has certainly been an element of the U.S. political tradition, going back to the drafting of the Constitution itself. That was an instance where the perfect was recognized as the enemy of the good, and the founders – after several weeks of intensive, old-fashioned “horse-trading” – produced an instrument of government that merely succeeded in satisfying, rather than impressing, most of them. As Benjamin Franklin put it, shortly after the document was completed:

I confess that there are several parts of this Constitution which I do not at present approve, but I am not sure I shall never approve them: For having lived long, I have experienced many instances of being obliged by better information or fuller consideration, to change opinions even on important subjects, which I once thought right, but found to be otherwise. It is therefore that the older I grow, the more apt I am to doubt my own judgment, and to pay more respect to the judgment of others. . . .

I doubt too whether any other Convention we can obtain may be able to make a better Constitution. For when you assemble a number of men to have the advantage of their joint wisdom, you inevitably assemble with those men, all their prejudices, their passions, their errors of opinion, their local interests, and their selfish views. From such an Assembly can a perfect production be expected? It therefore astonishes me, Sir, to find this system approaching so near to perfection as it does; and I think it will astonish our enemies, who are waiting with confidence to hear that our councils are confounded like those of the Builders of Babel; and that our States are on the point of separation, only to meet hereafter for the purpose of cutting one another's throats. Thus I consent, Sir, to this Constitution because I expect no better, and because I am not sure, that it is not the best. . . .

On the whole, Sir, I cannot help expressing a wish that every member of the Convention who may still have objections to it, would with me, on this occasion doubt a little of his own infallibility -- and to make manifest our unanimity, put his name to this instrument.

Sadly, the wisdom of a Benjamin Franklin – or a Paul H. Douglas or Olympia Snowe – seems to be in increasingly short supply in the U.S. Congress, which is now become that confounding Babel of discordant, uncompromising selfish interests, some of whom are driven by simple self-aggrandizement, others by an almost fanatical devotion to ideology, and others by a craven timidity, fearing that any overture to compromise will prematurely end their political careers.

Meanwhile, the country continues to careen toward disaster, with an unsustainable growth in national debt, an underemployed youth that cannot afford a decent college education without throwing themselves into a hopeless mountain of debt, a crumbling infrastructure, and a shrinking middle class that is leaving in its wake a growing divide between the very rich and the very poor.

We can only hope that a growing number of our political representatives will learn – and learn quickly – that brinkmanship is not statesmanship, that compromise in politics is not the same as compromise with a dictator, terrorist, or foreign enemy, and that the higher ground is only reached when we are able to understand and work with others who are not like us, who do not share all of our particular views, but who nevertheless want to bring about a future that is better for all of us.