Derek Kilmer (D-WA)
A long, detailed opinion piece in the WaPo by Amanda Ripley, an expert in conflict resolution, describes the fascinating and critically important work of the temporary House Select Committee on the Modernization of Congress. Among other things, the committee was formed to improve transparency, accessibility and communication throughout the House and to try to deal with the shift in too much power from congress to K Street lobbyists. The committee is now dissolved, but many of its recommendations have been implemented. Those recommendations came from a committee of six Democrats and six Republicans, with all recommendations requiring approval of an eight vote supermajority.
This is the most positive and promising bit of news about the state of polarized politics and government function that I can recall since Trump was won the Republican nomination in 2016. It is a basis for some hope that our democracy maybe can find a way to avoid falling to demagoguery, authoritarianism and corruption.
To try to keep this from being TL/DR, some key information is summarized.
- The main thing that made this committee an astounding success was the dogged pursuit of building trust between the two sides by forcing them to interact, talk to each other and over time (i) coming to understand each other's perceptions of reality and truth a lot better (often or usually without agreeing) and (ii) learning how to trust and not betray trust. What this committee did was the opposite of what polarizing, distrust-fomenting partisan sources, e.g., Faux News, routinely do.
- After the 1/6 coup attempt, committee chairman Derek Kilmer (D-WA), went to each member separately and asked what they wanted to work on, and the basic answer was nothing. There was deep distrust between both sides and deep fear among some Democrats that Republicans were out to literally kill them. Committee Republicans who vote against certifying the 2020 vote were singled out as not acceptable people to work with. After those 11 separate talks, Kilmer said, “We’re screwed. We’re going to have to do some stuff differently.” The WaPo opinion described it like this:
When people in intractable conflict sit down and listen to each other under the right conditions, they make surprising discoveries. “There were several cases when one party said something, and the other side’s jaw dropped,” said David Eisner, head of the nonprofit Convergence, which helped organize the retreat. “Both sides believed the other side had been acting politically. And something happened where they realized they were all people — people who had been through something traumatic.”
Even as they continued to bitterly disagree about many things, the simple experience of being heard was cathartic. “It felt like someone turned the air conditioner on,” Eisner says. “You saw people starting to be curious about each other again.” Afterward, several members told Kilmer they were ready to work together. Nothing was resolved, but much was illuminated. “It was still pretty raw,” [Republican vice chairman] Timmons says, “but it was helpful to understand the degree to which [some members] were legitimately in fear for their lives. It made me understand where they were coming from.” (I call that getting to stasis - see why it is a good thing in political disagreements?)
- Kilmer, a former management consultant, started looking for ways to make destructive intractable conflict and distrust morph into constructive intractable conflict and more trust. Minds were not going to change, but how those members did their work damn well was going to change. With Churchill’s insight in mind, “We shape our buildings and afterwards our buildings shape us,” Kilmer forced members of opposing sides to regularly meet socially and to sit next to each other at a round table instead of across a physical gulf. In all other House committees, opposing members rarely or never socialize or talk in committee meetings. Instead they glare at each other across raised seats, with witnesses sitting in the valley below them. In other committees, opposing members mostly attack each other or say nothing. Distrust and anger just ferment. Kilmer desegregated cloak rooms and antechambers to force the two sides to face each other and talk. Kilmer also required there be just one set of bipartisan set of staffers for all the members instead of the usual two bipartisan sets, one for each side. Having a single bipartisan staff essentially forced committee staff to row in generally the same direction and doubled the amount of work it could do compared to two opposing staffs.
- Finally, during meetings, Kilmer allowed members to chime in when they felt like it, instead of giving each member a 5-minute time slot to speak. This change had a major impact, as Ripley writes:
This sounds small, but it was utterly subversive — and surprisingly popular. “The members truly loved it,” remembers Yuri Beckelman, the committee’s staff director. “It made people more comfortable. It was very conversational.” This was in stark contrast to his experience on other committees, where members glared at each other from opposite sides of the room.
It was also refreshing for the witnesses, as I can attest. The modernization committee asked me to testify two years ago, based on a book I’d written on conflict, and I came in with low expectations. I’d covered a lot of hearings as a reporter, and they always felt choreographed, stilted and performative. This experience was different. It felt, at times, like members were sharing their genuine fears and asking real questions. It was not obvious who was on which political side, which was at once both disorienting and wonderful.
“I learned more in one hour in a modernization committee hearing than weeks sitting in every other committee venue,” Rep. Dean Phillips (D-Minn.) says. “We learned by conversation — not confrontation. It was the most profoundly meaningful and gratifying time I’ve spent in Congress.”
Ripley described what Kilmer had done: “Because it turns out that basic practices you would use to prevent anarchy in any kindergarten classroom were not being followed in Congress.”
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And that is why I keep harping on the poisonous power of dark free speech to kill trust. To that I should add, the power of dark social situation to kill trust. Both are trust killers. Loss of trust undermines democracy and empowers both authoritarianism and corruption. It is a tragedy, maybe an existential threat, that all House and Senate committees do not operate under rules that tend to turn destructive conflict into constructive conflict. Over time, that milieu would probably lead to less perceptions of vast partisan differences and distrust and more trust and constructive governance. Kilmer should get a Nobel Peace Prize.
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