During the first half of the nineteenth century there were In Washington DC three legislators (most often in the Senate) who came to be associated with the way that the national government functioned. They were John C. Calhoun of SC, the apologist for slavery and states rights and even secession, and Daniel Webster of Massachusetts, who was seen as both a staunch Unionist and an opponent of slavery and a supporter of those abolitionists who pursued peaceful means to accomplish their goal,
The third member of this triumvirate was Henry Clay of Kentucky, known as the Great Compromiser. He owned slaves but opposed the institution of slavery and so was often attacked by folks on both sides of that moral issue. He believed that only by compromise could government work. He believed that compromise was when two or more sides to a question got something they wanted - wanted it enough that they could accept the other side(s) getting something. He is credited with putting to together the Compromise of 1850, a series of bills, that saved the union from threatened southern secession and resultant civil war ten years before that happened. And since most historians see the South in a much stronger position, economically and militarily in 1850 then they were in 1860 it can be argued that his compromise saved the union.
Today America is in the worst economic crisis since the Great depression of the 1930's. But in todays’ politics compromise has become a dirty word. Where national leaders like Norris and Vandenberg, LBJ and Tip O’Neill are lauded for their ability to get opposing sides to reason together, today, those who compromise are excoriated as flip-floppers, opportunists and hypocrites.
Since the 1994 election of the radical Republicans under Newt Gingrich, with his Contract for America, the right in this country has demanded an ideological purity, more and more precise and limited, from it’s adherents. If the right wants white and the left wants black there will be no gray -- as far as they are concerned it’s white or nothing.
After almost twenty years of this intransigence, and especially the last three on the part of the right, the left in American politics (liberals, progressives, Move-On.org, AFL-CIO) has begun to demand an ideological purity on the part of its side. Though the left seems still willing to accept a compromise here and there depending on the specific issue, it is being more and more pushed to the extreme ‘to fight fire with fire’ and demand that its representatives not concede points to the right, which doesn’t want to compromise anyway, but to hold fast for left positions.
Now comes a President who believes in Clay’s injunction that compromise is they way to govern. Problem is no one wants to compromise with him and it does take two to compromise. So he modifies his proposals before presenting them, incorporating ideas and public critiques from the opposition in the belief that it will make the proposal more palatable to the right. It doesn’t. Whatever he suggests, regardless of the number of Republican ideas (and Health Care and Financial Regulation are full of them) they reject the proposals out of hand. Anything this President proposes they demand be rejected.
So are we governing America today? No! We have a dysfunctional and in many ways a non-functional national government (and likewise in the case of many of the states). It is one party rule and one faction of one party rule or it is ruin.
What then is the answer. Henry Clay said he’d rather be right than be President. Should Obama continue his crusade for compromise even if as it seems it may cause him to be a one term President?
Or should Obama exercise Leadership?: Present programs without pre- compromise -- campaign for them using Teddy Roosevelt’s Bully Pulpit, FDR’s fireside chats and Truman’s tour across the country and rally the people of America behind his proposals. Present them in simple understandable terms: e.g. Health Care for All; Quality Public Education; Jobs, Jobs, Jobs; Let the Rich Share the Burden; Government out of People’s Private Lives. And run his billion dollar campaign on his set of positions. Win and defeat the right wing Radical Republicans. Then with four years and no re-election possible he can offer his vision of government by compromise - something both the right (defeated) and the left (tired and frightened by how bad it got) may be ready to accept.
A great Leader must stand for something - and such a Leader can compromise with those honestly willing to, in order to accomplish the things he stands for. Obama has, in the history of his office, models of those who led and compromised when needed and who refused to if necessary: Jackson, Lincoln, TR, Wilson, FDR, Truman, Reagan. He also has the model of those who either stubbornly rejected any compromise, e.g. the Adamses, Taylor, Andrew Johnson, or those who failed to lead, e.g. Hayes, Cleveland, Taft, Coolidge, Ford. It’s Obama’s choice which model to follow - it’s America’s future that rests on the choice he makes. Lead then Compromise or Compromise then try to Lead.
5 September 2011
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