Consensus, Compromise, and Democracy

Someone once said that “Politics is the art of Compromise.” I wish it was so simple. Consensus, a type of compromise, was fairly common among American Indian tribes and also in other small-scale societies around the world. This was not necessarily consensus among absolutely everyone but was, rather, consensus reached by the tribal elders, chiefs, or those in charge of such things. Consensus is fairly easy to obtain when you have societies that consist of only one ethnicity, one tribe, or clan or lineage, and everyone pretty much shares in the same beliefs and values. Consensus is virtually out of the question when it comes to large and complex societies that consist of different ethnic groups, different religious groups, different interest groups, and members who do not always share the same beliefs and values. It would be absurd to expect consensus in our large and complex culture and we rarely, if ever, either expect or achieve it.

We do commonly expect compromises, however, and our leaders spend much of their time trying to achieve some kind of compromise on virtually all issues of importance. Basically this is what attempts at bipartisanship are all about. The problem of compromise and bipartisanship, it might well be argued, are fundamentally opposed to good government, or at least in achieving satisfactory results, in spite of the fact we tend to think otherwise. Perhaps the best current example of this is the recent health care bill. What should have been a system of single-payer universal health care (as all other major industrialized societies have) turned out, as a result of compromises, to be something entirely different and, in fact, not very good, although it did have some new and useful features. It is not universal, not independent of insurance companies that continue to profit needlessly from health care, and so on. The same thing was true of the stimulus bill that, because of compromises, was not as strong as it should have been. If there is a compromise on the repeal of the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, who do not even need them, we will, once again, have an undesirable outcome because of the presumed necessity for bipartisanship and compromise.

There is an even more important problem with compromise as the cornerstone of a democratic society, the fact that some things simply cannot be compromised. If the outcomes of legislation are often watered down and emasculated by compromise, what happens when there are issues that cannot be compromised? Abortion is probably the best example. In its most basic form abortion cannot be compromised, either one is for it or against it, it is like the impossibility of being a little big pregnant. Of course there have been some compromises. In some cases, for example, people have been willing to allow abortion for the health of the mother or in cases of rape or incest. These compromises do not really get at the heart of the issue, however. In the case of abortion there are true believers who will not, and actually cannot, give up their beliefs because of their religions. There are other instances where people could in principle compromise, but refuse to because of their principles. I, personally, for example, would probably never agree to compromise on nuclear energy, because I believe it is dangerous, stupid, and short-sighted and would definitely not be in the best interest of humanity or even life in general if pursued. There are apparently Republicans who are so dedicated to tax breaks for the wealthy they refuse to compromise, although in cases like this, compromise would be easily possible and not too difficult to achieve. Most issues of economics and budgets are amenable to compromise if the parties are serious about wanting something done. Religious matters, however, are not very amenable to compromise.

What can one do in the face of situations of no compromise? In the case of Stalin, and some other dictatorships, it is easy, you just eliminate those who refuse to compromise. In general this is not a solution we have employed here in the U.S. It is our democracy that is supposed to settle these situations of no compromise. Basically that is what democracy is designed for. In theory, at least, this is what majority rule is supposed to solve. You have disagreements, you vote, and the majority wins, thus settling the problem. But this assumes that everyone in the democracy agrees to abide by the rules, and sometimes, as in the case of abortion, they do not. Another possible solution is violence in the form of revolution or acts of terrorism meant to force change. The Civil War was a case in point and nowadays we have the occasional Timothy McVays or those who shoot abortionists. So far we have avoided another all out revolutionary war, although the Tea Partiers seemingly threaten one. “We came unarmed, this time,” they say, or talk about “2nd amendments solutions.”

There is another method that sometimes works, at least temporarily. We had a recent local example of this having to do with consensus, but it applies to compromise as well (although consensus and compromise are not one and the same thing). We had a large committee set up to attempt consensus on an important matter having to do with a fish that was going extinct. All interested factions were to be members of this committee, including environmentalists (who are very unwelcome here to begin with). After many months of meetings all the factions agreed to a solution that was environmentally unsatisfactory. The environmentalist refused to sign on, so the committee simply changed the rules (improperly) of membership in such a way as to get rid of the environmentalists as irrelevant. They then announced consensus. You see how simply this is? Unlike Stalin, you don’t have to banish people to an American Siberia or assassinate them, you just change the rules. This doesn’t really solve the problem (in fact, even Stalin didn’t really solve his problems), but it puts it off for a time so they can proceed with their intentions anyway.

So, what is President Obama to do? The Republicans announced very quickly they wanted him to fail and would say “no” to everything. That is, they were not only not going to compromise, they were not even going to try. They have not stuck religiously to this pledge but pretty consistently have honored it (they did insist on changes to the health care bill and stimulus, for example). But they have prevented any actions that would allow us to overcome our serious and urgent problems by their failure to cooperate and try to achieve a compromise. If Obama was truly a Fascist they would all be in jail by now, or at least banished somewhere. For obvious reasons (our laws and constitution), Obama cannot take such action even if he wished to do so. It seems the two greatest problems for a democracy as we (at least pretend to) practice it is that (1) it is far too slow in decision making, and (2) it operates too importantly on compromise that produces rather half-assed results, and (3) it cannot, or at least does not, deal effectively with those who refuse to follow the rules.