There has been much discussion this week about the launch of No Labels and its significant attempt to organize the cause of political moderation and bipartisan compromise into a movement. I hope it can succeed. But it’s worth reflecting for a moment on why political compromise is so hard these days, and the obstacles that a movement organized around the ideal of a politics of consent and compromise faces.
Fortunately, two very smart political thinkers have done exactly this, so my work in this post is merely to summarize and reflect a little on their arguments. In an important essay entitled “Mindsets of Political Compromise,” UPenn President Amy Gutmann and Harvard Political Theorist Dennis Thompson have made what strikes me as a very trenchant observation: “The more that campaigning comes to dominate governing in democratic politics, the harder compromise becomes.”
Gutmann and Thompson argue that there are two primary mindsets in politics – the uncompromising mindset and the compromising mindset.
The uncompromising mindset is the mindset of the modern campaign, which “favors candidates who stand firmly on their positions.” Campaigning is about drawing distinctions and standing by principles, as it should be – voters need to know the difference between two candidates to make informed choices.
In their conception, this uncompromising mindset has two elements: “principled tenacity” and “mutual mistrust.”
Principled tenacity rests on the widely-held assumption that politicians are supposed to have deeply felt moral principles about things like justice and fairness, and they should fight for them.
Mutual mistrust is “the assumption that their opponents are motivated mainly by a desire to defeat them and their principles.” This often leads to cynicism, and they write that, “as the cynicism about the motives of politicians spreads to cynicism about the process of compromising, particular compromises become easier to resist and condemn.”
By contrast, the compromising mindset is, or should be, the mindset of governing, since reaching solutions in a democracy almost always requires some compromise. It also has two elements: “principled prudence” and “mutual respect.”
Principled prudence is based on “a pragmatic recognition that compromise is usually necessary in a democracy to accomplish anything of significance.” But it does not amount to mere compromise for the sake of compromise. It is instead a recognition that even if politics is the art of the possible, sometimes nothing is still better than the possible.
Mutual respect is the assumption that even if political opponents may have ulterior motives, they are still capable of negotiating in good faith and for what they think is right and that they are acting on principle.
Gutmann and Thompson argue that, “to reach a compromise, then, politicians must adjust their wills as much as their reason. They must be able to turn a will to oppose into a will to cooperate. That involves a psychological shift as much as a policy change.” They spend some time in their piece tracing out procedural ways to encourage politicians to find more common ground and be more aware of these different mindsets. (You can read the whole piece here)
Thinking in terms of mindsets is useful, because it clarifies just how different and incompatible the processes of getting elected and governing have become.
What this implies is that political moderates who care about the process of governing ought to get serious about campaign reform issues. Put simply, the permanent campaign increasingly means a permanent incapacity of elected officials to collectively solve problems. If politicians are spending all their time bashing their opponents and standing firm for their principles, that doesn’t leave them much time to get together to actually govern productively.
A slight caveat to this is that, as I’ve written in a recent op-ed for Politico, there is good evidence that the voting public, especially Democrats and Independents, do like compromise. And voters may even reward politicians who are seen as being willing to compromise. However, I’m aware of few campaigns organized around the claim of “I’m willing to compromise with the opposing party, so elect me.” All campaigns, as far as I can tell, are about drawing distinctions, even if it’s between a candidate who’s post-partisan and independent and one who’s not.
Photo Credit: Trebor Sholtz