Compromise vs. Common Ground

Context

The federal government is gridlocked in terms of legislating and it will very likely stay that way for a long time. One reason, probably the main reason, is that the radical right refuses to compromise. Of course, the radical right rejects that and blames the left. Politicians on the right sometimes used to refer to finding common ground as the way to get things done in the federal government. That raises the question of exactly what finding common ground means and how it works. It turns out that ground will not end gridlock.  

Biden is hosed: It is very likely that Biden will not get any period of goodwill with cooperation from the GOP in congress. The days of a legislative honeymoon with congress after a new president is sworn in are dead, gone and not coming back any time soon, if ever. Those honeymoons used to reflect a now-extinct belief in the GOP that elections have consequences if a democratic president is elected to office. That was clear after Obama’s election in 2008. What is happening now with vicious GOP attacks on the 2020 election is a matter of pounding more nails in the already sealed coffin that holds the long-dead corpse of the legislative GOP honeymoon.

Compromise vs. common ground

In a well-known 2011 interview, former House speaker John Boehner attacked and rejected compromise as a governance tool:

BOEHNER: We have to govern. That's what we were elected to do.
STAHL: But governing means compromising.

BOEHNER: It means working together.

STAHL: It also means compromising.
[ . . . ]
BOEHNER: I made clear I am not going to compromise on my principles, nor am I going to compromise . . . the will of the American people.
STAHL: And you’re saying, “I want common ground, but I’m not going to compromise.” I don’t understand that. I really don’t.
BOEHNER: When you say the word “compromise”. . . a lot of Americans look up and go, “Uh-oh, they’re going to sell me out.”
[ . . . ]
STAHL: . . . you did compromise [to get all the Bush tax cuts made permanent]?
BOEHNER: . . . we found common ground.
STAHL: Why won’t you say–you’re afraid of the word.
BOEHNER: I reject the word.

 

In October of 2011, the Washington Post wrote: “‘My message to you today is simple: faith in government has never been high, but it doesn’t have to be this low,’ Boehner said, according to his prepared remarks. ‘The American people need to see that despite our differences, we can get things done. We can start by recognizing that ‘common ground’ and ‘compromise’ are not the same thing.’” 

It was clear that by 2011, if not earlier,[1] the radical right had rejected compromise as a legitimate tool of democratic governance. The radical right sleight of hand called finding common ground meant no compromising, which was the real goal. And, now in 2020, the radical right usually does not even pretend to worry about compromise, finding common ground or whatever other euphemism it might come up with to deflect from its central role as being the core source of partisan obstructionism.[2]

Arguably, the GOP no longer governs mostly in the name of the public interest, the will of the people or the rule of law. It rules mostly in the name of party and the special interests who financially support it. 

What else is there?

Given the seriousness of the compromise and gridlock problems, and they are gravely serious, what else has been said about compromise and common ground in politics? 

One source, the Common Ground Committee, discussed the merits of finding common ground at length (transcript, podcast). One useful suggestion was to look for smaller issues or nuance where there is bipartisan agreement in bigger divisive issues such as healthcare or immigration. That constitutes common ground, but it offers no insight into how to reach compromise on bigger issues. 

Another source argues that finding common ground is sometimes useful, but more often it’s an impediment to compromise. It can get in the way of facing the difficulty and cognitive dissonance of actual compromise. 

“Where common ground agreements can be found, they can in fact serve the common good. But they are not the only – or even the most productive–way to pursue that goal. The classic compromise – where all sides gain on balance but also sacrifice something valuable to their opponents – is a more promising route to the common good. ..... To begin to make compromise more feasible and the common good more attainable, we need to appreciate the distinctive value of compromise and recognize the misconceptions that stand in its way. A common mistake is to assume that compromise requires finding the common ground on which all can agree. That undermines more realistic efforts to seek classic compromises, in which each party gains by sacrificing something valuable to the other, and together they serve the common good by improving upon the status quo. ..... Common ground agreements are morally and politically attractive because they have a principled coherence from all perspectives. ..... Consensus on common ground is desirable if it can be found. But the common ground is more barren, its potential for yielding meaningful legislation more limited, than the inspiring rhetoric in its favor might suggest. ..... Another problem with common ground agreements is that trying to find the usually small points of policy convergence is likely to prove less effective in addressing major issues than combining big ideas from the partisans. 

The most serious problem with the preoccupation with the common ground is that it undermines the pursuit of the more challenging but more promising form of agreement: the classic compromise. In a classic compromise, all sides sacrifice something in order to improve on the status quo from their perspective. The sacrifices accepted in a classic compromise are at least partly determined by the opposing side’s will, and they therefore require parties not merely to get less than they want, but also, due to their opponents, to get less than they think they deserve. ..... Classic compromises serve the common good not only by improving on the status quo from the agreeing parties’ particular perspectives, but also by contributing to a robust democratic process. ..... So if compromise is to be achieved on these major issues, we must value agreements that are less morally coherent and less politically appealing than those that rest on common ground or an overlapping consensus.” (emphasis added)

That argues that finding common ground is usually not as good as compromise. Instead, it  can be a means to avoid actual compromise and maybe for at least some people, creating a false appearance of getting something significant done. That source argues that governance by common ground is a utopian mirage. Unfortunately, real compromise generally creates moral dissonance, leaving compromises open to criticisms of confusion, political treason and surrender. Moralization and attendant weaponization of politics and political issues (discussed here), e.g., the pandemic, helps make compromise more difficult. 

Morally weaponized politics is what the radical right intends. That works to its advantage because it is easier to stop government by fomenting the moral dissonance that compromise creates than it is to get something done by government. The radical right hates government. It hates a functioning government. It tries to break government so it won’t compromise and thus won’t work .

Again, Biden is hosed.

Footnotes: 

1. It was clear that by early in 2009, prompted by the election of Obama, radical right elites decided they were done with compromise. They decided that all-out opposition, no cooperation and no compromise with any democrat, including Obama, was the best strategy for the GOP going forward. That remains true today. When bills passes congress today, it is because the subject matter does not trigger intense radical right resistance or because failure to pass the bill would probably hurt the radical right too much. In 2011 Boehner was still blithering and deceiving about finding common ground, because the radical right (i) believed its rank and file still had some feeling that compromise was at least occasionally necessary, and (ii) did not want to appear obstructionist. With the exception of bills to avoid shutting the government down or defaulting on the mostly GOP federal debt, such qualms are now generally gone. 

2. The trend goes back even farther than 2009. At one time, compromise was considered a virtuous outcome. Today, the radical right and its endless dark free speech regard it as treason. Politico wrote this in 2011 about how the Senate had become dysfunctional by the late 1990s:

Today we have an increasing tendency to approach every task — and each other — in an ever more adversarial spirit. Nowhere is this more evident, or more destructive, than in the Senate.

Though the two-party system is oppositional by nature, there is plenty of evidence that a certain (yes) comity has been replaced by growing enmity. We don’t have to look as far back as [Henry] Clay for evidence. In 1996, for example, an unprecedented 14 incumbent senators announced that they would not seek reelection. And many, in farewell essays, described an increase in vituperation and partisanship that made it impossible to do the work of the Senate.

“The bipartisanship that is so crucial to the operation of Congress,” Howell Heflin of Alabama wrote, “especially the Senate, has been abandoned.” J. James Exon of Nebraska described an “ever-increasing vicious polarization of the electorate” that had “all but swept aside the former preponderance of reasonable discussion.”