Americans have lost the ability to compromise in every sphere, but it’s become especially dire in politics – we are becoming a nation that cannot work together to legislate itself.
At a time in history when our individual desires can be beamed into our homes at a moment’s notice, it’s no wonder we see no reason to settle for anything less than exactly what we want. But this instant gratification is exacerbating our intolerance of other perspectives.
Congress is constantly at a political stalemate with threats of government shutdowns commonplace and former House speaker John Boehner even resigning from his position, later telling Politico that deadlock was a large part of his decision. Not even the most heinous massacres of our youngest schoolchildren or our oldest churchgoers can convince legislators to compromise on some common-sense gun control measures, be they expanded background checks, assault weapons bans or the elimination of gun show loopholes. No wonder a 2013 bipartisan study on congressional gridlock found that the American electorate is “more deeply divided along ideological and party lines and more wary that those who represent the other party are acting in good faith” than ever before.
Perhaps it’s time to take a step back and remember that there is no such thing as a perfect leader or perfect legislation, and we will never create a perfect world. In fact, some of the most celebrated leaders in history held views we would consider intolerable today.
Take Abraham Lincoln: known as “the Great Emancipator” who freed the slaves, Lincoln’s overriding respect for the law meant he started out as anything but an abolitionist. Less than three years before he was elected president, Lincoln told a Chicago crowd during his campaign for US Senate: “I believe there is no right, and ought to be no inclination in the people of the free states to enter into the slave states, and interfere with the question of slavery at all.”
The president also didn’t believe that African Americans could ever be assimilated into white society and, during his first two years as president, he advocated for the voluntary “colonization” of slaves abroad – essentially putting them all on an island somewhere. He even hosted a black delegation at the White House in August 1862 to try to convince them that their relocation abroad would be “better for us both”, and that their refusal to leave the country would be “completely selfish”.
The president’s words left the men, and others who read the ensuing press coverage, feeling insulted; Abraham Lincoln was an offensive bigot even by the standards of his day.
Cesar Chavez is another example of a progressive leader who carried some unexpected political beliefs. The famed organizer of the United Farmworkers Union is a Hispanic American hero who brought basic human rights to people of color harvesting our nation’s food. He was also staunchly opposed to allowing undocumented immigrants to stay in the US for most of his career until he supported a 1986 bill signed by Ronald Reagan that legalized the status of nearly 3 million people.
Before then, Chavez was fearful of the potential of undocumented immigrants to break a UFW strike as well as the tendency for exploitation of such workers. Things got dicey when UFW leaders like Chavez’s cousin paid union members to patrol areas known to be points of entry for undocumented immigrants and news reports in Yuma, Arizona, claimed that Chavez’s cronies committed acts of violence against people they caught entering the country. Chavez also encouraged UFW members to report to the INS, the forerunner to today’s US immigration authorities, any undocumented workers they met in the fields so that they could be deported.
In the current generation of idealism, men like Lincoln and Chavez would have been tweeted out of their jobs before they could broker such landmark change as the Emancipation Proclamation, issued by Lincoln in 1863, or the first union contract for farm workers, brokered by Chavez in 1965. I’m not saying we shouldn’t be careful and analytic, but we should also note that it’s possible for an imperfect person to rise perfectly to the occasion.
Until we allow some room for our candidates to be imperfect, it’s nearly impossible to get anything done at all levels of government. In my hometown of Austin, Texas, people living in a neighborhood called Onion Creek, built on a flood plain in the 1970’s before the Army Corps of Engineers properly mapped the location, are still waiting for federal funds requested by the Corps in 2006 to help buy out homeowners and relocate them to a safer area.
Meanwhile, at least five major floods have occurred in Onion Creek over the years and at least as many people have died along with millions of dollars worth of property damage. In 2014, Congress finally gave $11.8m of the proposed $44.3m to the city of Austin for flood relief. We’re still waiting on the rest.
So how do Americans learn to compromise again in order to more efficiently run the country? One way to start is by getting out of our usual opinion echo chambers. That’s why the Commission on Political Reform, the bipartisan group that conducted that congressional gridlock study, recommends that ordinary citizens make a commitment to volunteerism and education. It’s a lot more work than just insulting one another on the internet, but the results could really surprise you.
