The (Lost) Art of Compromise

All government, indeed every human benefit and enjoyment, every virtue, and every prudent act, is founded on compromise and barter.

            Edmund Burke, Irish-born English philosopher and political theorist

This past weekend, Speaker of the House John Boehner announced he was retiring from the Speakership and leaving a congressional career that spans a quarter of a century.  Members of Congress in general and the Republican Party specifically greeted the news with a certain amount of enthusiasm.  Mr. Boehner was seen as an obstacle to the absolutism that is championed by some politicians – mainly from the Tea Party wing.  Their lack of political maturity and understanding of their profession has caused undue stress among conservatives and in the process, has damaged the philosophy’s perception. 

This is not an article about Mr. Boehner or his legacy.  This is about the job of a representative.  This has more to do with a key ingredient to democracy.  Since the early days, the country has been a philosophical battleground of differing ideas based on differing perceptions and understandings of the Constitution.  As these groups have circled one another, trying to get one piece of legislation passed after another, they have accepted the notion that it is impractical and potentially destructive to try and get everything one wants. 

As George Will once said, democracy is the government of persuasion and insofar as that is true, it requires patience and compromise.  The absolutists in Congress today, with whom I largely agree, are following a policy of brinkmanship.  An all or nothing approach is rarely the right way to go about it.  There are only a few times in U.S. history where that was the case.  Mostly, representatives are tasked with struggling to create something out of the half-loaf. 

Whether the Congress and the Republican Party are any better off with the retirement of the Speaker is one for statesmen to argue.  Whether the country is better off with a contingent demanding that everything go their way simply because they are in a majority, I would say that is an unequivocal “no.”  Republican supporters throughout the country have seen various attempts by the party to muscle through legislation and fail miserably.  They have seen party attempts at forcing “doomsday” choices on the other party blow back in their face.  The reason it happens is because, in part, a failure to compromise. 

Compromise can be an ugly word.  Some seem to confuse it with appeasement.  These attitudes are heightened by people looking at Democrats – in Congress and in the White House – as a personal affront.  Democrats simply represent another, if not mistaken, view point.  To attempt to roll over them, thinking the most decisive victory is the best victory, is political immaturity. 

The American people can understand the notion of give and take as in the course of their relationships – at work, at school, at home.  What they do not understand, because few experience it, is steamrolling others with little to no regard.  With the art of compromise, one puts more pressure on the other side.  The attempt at rationality puts greater focus and more heat on the other side for an equal measure.  Additionally, compromise prevents the other side from a knee-jerk response.  Greater bipartisan support is possible for conservative ideas.

Discourse can be polemic and debates can be vigorous.  However, in the process of making laws and setting policy, the smarter play is compromise.  It is an art that is reserved for adults, reasonable and logical who understand the nature of man.  The art of persuasion requires one to understand others.  An all-or-nothing approach requires nothing but obdurateness.  It requires no thought, interaction, cooperation and, ultimately, no talent or intelligence.  It simply requires a disregard of all others who are not like you.  Conservatism is not like that and nor should politics.  It is not personal.  It is not about the individual but about the whole.

The Messiness of Democracy

Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have tried from time to time.
            Winston Churchill, 1947

The immediate failure of the Egyptian democracy experiment is not tragic – to call it such would suggest that it was unpredictable.  Unfortunately, the travails in one of our oldest civilizations are banal with a litter of broken civilizations lining the years since democracy was first conceived.  In the movie Body Heat, Teddy the arsonist (played by Mickey Rourke) says “you got fifty ways you can (screw) up and if you can think of twenty-five of them, you’re a genius and you ain’t no genius.”  So fall those who attempt democracy.  The situation in Egypt today is dangerous, regionally threatening and requires the strongest language and action from President Obama and other of the world’s democratic leaders.    

The United States undoubtedly was lucky.  Our government was put together by men who understood and valued the law.  Yet, despite the fact that our founding fathers were geniuses for their time, they screwed up and often.  The Federalist government during the Adams administration passed a law making it essentially illegal to criticize the government.  There was a presidential donnybrook in the aftermath of the 1800 presidential election when a tied electorate threw the outcome in doubt.  When President William Henry Harrison died in 1841, it created an uncertainty as to who was indeed the president.  Vice President John Tyler became president but was constantly challenged by Harrison’s cabinet, doubting his legitimacy.   

Civil War broke apart the country for five years over our inability to understand and implement the best intentions of our founding fathers.  Presidents during the Gilded Age of the late 1800s were mere bystanders to the events that transpired around them.  Historians have charged various presidents ranging from Abraham Lincoln to Franklin D. Roosevelt to George W. Bush of overstepping their power.  Leaders ranging from Andrew Johnson to Richard Nixon to Bill Clinton have broken laws.  We’ve denied rights to many of our citizens at one time or another.  Our country has faced scandal, defeat, embarrassment and uncertainty.  Yet, we are extolled as one of the oldest, operable democracies on the planet.  We are, as John Winthrop called us, a city upon the hill – an example to the rest of the world.   We take our mistakes and always try to learn from them in the spirit of creating a more perfect union. 

And so, we turn our war weary heads to the bedlam that is Egypt.  The worst thing that could have happened was the military control of the government and the imprisonment of Mohammad Morsi.  He is flawed, he is possibly corrupt and he was at times dismissive of the constitutional restraints of his office.  He was likely not what the majority of Egyptians wanted but for the sake of future democracy in the land of the pharaohs, it was paramount that he remain in office and finish out his term.  The course that the country is taking is not towards stability but towards anarchy and a permanent distrust of the will of the people.  The lasting gift of democracy is a people’s belief that the government will act as it needs to in times of turmoil and when faltering, right itself.  For a democratic government to work, the people must have faith in it.  The Egyptians, certainly the supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood, do not, though the aforementioned group does not help by persecuting various religious minorities. 

The military leaders are serving as an éminence grise but the beauty of democracy is that rule and authority are out in the open and available for all to see.  The world’s democratic leaders need to up their pressure on the Egyptian military while at the same time putting measures in place that could assist a righted Egypt back on the course of democracy.  George W. Bush was right in that all people have an inherent desire for the freedoms of democracy.  Yet, democracy demands a heavy responsibility from the leaders who wield authority and from the people who must accept the decision of the nation, however misguided they might think the majority to be.  Prime Minister Churchill was correct.  Let us hope that the Egyptians have the chance to understand and embrace that.