My Demands Are Not Negotiable – What's Your Best Offer?

 

I wish I were 24 and handsome. And rich. The monetary award I got that went along with the Nobel Peace Prize would only be a small part of that. Eternal world peace would be a bigger reward.

All right. I'm neither 24 nor handsome, and I'll never be rich or win the Nobel Prize. I regret as well that world peace is no more than a dream. But there are some things I can accomplish. Like vacuuming the dining room, or taking out the garbage. That's the approach that most people take. They do the possible. It may not be quiet desperation, but it takes their minds off larger issues. However there are other ways.

It is said that politics is the art of the possible. The Federalists who wrote and proposed the American Constitution opposed a delineation of Rights, but eventually they accepted the idea of a Bill of Rights when the passage of the entire document depended on it. Abolitionists signed on to a document that included the institution of slavery, counting slaves as three fifths of a person for purposes of taxation and representation. And those who favored strong state governments and reduced central power,ⁱacquiesced to having a strong Federal government. All in the service of a new nation. They compromised.

Nowadays “compromise” is a dirty word.ⁱⁱ We view the whole idea with disfavor. It's a sellout. “My way or the highway.” That's the modern creed. “Just say 'No.'” If we can't have it our way, we don't want it at all. We would prefer to sit in the corner and pout, and accuse those we oppose of evil. In England there is at least a pretense of a loyal opposition. There is acknowledgment that others may disagree and still be faithful and patriotic. Perhaps not all the Brits accept this idea – perhaps some, too, see opposition as obstructionism – but at least there is the suggestion that honest disagreement is possible in a civilized society.

American politics has fallen into the trap of total victory or nothing. Liberals and Conservativesⁱⁱⁱwant nothing short of whatever program they are supporting at a particular time.^iv And if not, all we can seem to do is to find different ways to insult each other. Rather than engage in courteous discourse and discussion, we simply “dis.” There used to be an expression,“Politics stops at the water's edge.” It was first enunciated in 1947 by Republican Senator Arthur Vandenberg during President Truman's first term, and indicated that while we may not share the same values, all Americans should be united when it came to dealing with the world.

The obvious implication was that we were not united at home. But that's what politics was all about. Nonetheless, despite disagreements about policies, we found a way to work together in the long run for the common good. Sadly, at least publicly we no longer have any kind of political cooperation – either for domestic or foreign policy. The predictable pattern is that the party out of power will do its best to paralyze the government until it can take over. Then, of course, it will be paralyzed by the party it replaced. The old saw,“Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country,” no longer has currency. Our “leaders” place party above country. “Purity”^vtakes precedence over accomplishment. We do not view half a loaf as better than none.

Of course there are absolute values that cannot be compromised. But those are not the problems at issue. What is involved is the idea of compromise itself. Because everything is done in the open – transparency and all that – accepting anything but a maximum position is seen by one-issue voters and viewed as backing down. Were Congress to act behind closed doors with no one to reveal the details of the negotiations,^vithere might be a way of reaching some accommodation that is impossible publicly. However secrecy is seen as corrupting. Yet when it came to writing the Constitution, the framers worked in secret^viiand, as John Roche wrote in The Founding Fathers:  A Reform Caucus in Action, "Perhaps the time has come, to borrow Walton Hamilton's fine phrase, to raise the framers from immortality to mortality, to give them credit for their magnificent demonstration of the art of democratic politics. The point must be reemphasized: they made history and did it within the limits of consensus."

For the most part, those who met in Philadelphia to write the new document, believed that the others – even those whom they opposed – were patriots. They may have disagreed with their positions but they did not doubt their dedication.^viii They were able to reach a decision because they were willing to trade ideas and institutions in order to reach a position which they believed superior to the one with which they started – the confederation of states. They knew that the document which they crafted would be hard to change later, which was the reason for the determination of some to have a Bill of Rights promised before ratification. But, for the most part, they did not question each other's motives – only their positions.

Unfortunately, the trust they had is often absent today. Compromise is difficult in an open society, and too often viewed, simply, as a starting point for the battle's next round. A typical example of this approach is the position of the Palestinians vis-a-vis Israel. Any public concessions by Israel are considered the starting point for the next round of negotiations.  But that is only the case – that the opponent's compromise is the new starting point – when discussions are possible to begin with. The American Congress is paralyzed by a refusal by all parties to leave their maximalist positions and try to reach a middle ground. They'd lose votes. So they talk to the voters, not to each other.

I am loath to suggest that modern politicians are less patriotic than the “Founding Fathers,” but there is no question that current pressures are different from those once faced. The concerns at that time were only war, peace, and history – as well as the good of a new nation. There were fewer pork-barrel projects and lobbyists then. And the constant jockeying nowadays of pressure groups and others whose main concern is their own benefit, is only aided by polls, focus groups, and the spotlight of the media. Perhaps the time has come for a return of secrecy, and the relinquishing of local representation, which leads to the demands for local projects. Perhaps the time has come for us to adopt a proportional national representation system based on total, not local vote.^ix To do so we'd need marked changes in the Constitution. It would take compromise And that would have to be done in secret.

But I'll be 24, handsome, rich, and a Nobel Peace Prize winner before that happens.

Next episode: “Change” – The more things change, the more things change.

i     The Federalists called them “anti-Federalists” but they were a diverse group and they, themselves, didn't really accept the designation.

ii    In a marriage, however, it's the most important word there is.
iii    And everyone else.

iv   Right or wrong, but never in doubt.

v    Not to mention the next election.

vi    A situation the media would consider intolerable.

vii    In public they could neither have made the necessary compromises nor fashioned an entirely new document, rather than simply fiddling with the Articles of Confederation.

viii   James Madison, a dedicated Federalist and author of the Constitution wrote, “... there never was an assembly of men, charged with a great and arduous task, who were more pure in their motives, or more exclusively or anxiously devoted to the object committed to them, than were the members of the Federal Convention of 1787 ...” cited in Original Meanings, by Jack N. Rakove. It should be remembered that Madison disagreed with the opinions of many of them, but he never lost sight of their dedication.

ix   Many countries have such systems. They require the proposal of a list of candidates by each of the participating parties. Seats in the House of Representatives would then assigned according to the percentage of the vote, and each party would then go down its list until it has filled the number of assigned seats. It is a national rather than a local election. We might even go back to the choice of Senators by State Legislatures to restore the representation of the states and of state interests.