All things considered, it hasn’t gone well for Prime Minister Theresa May, her party, the Labour Party and the other smaller factions in the Mother of Parliaments. The stunner is how well the Speaker has managed the chaos.
Anyone spending time listening to the President and others in the current American stalemate might wonder what has happened to fluent advocacy. The President’s impoverished lexicon leaves him ill-prepared to make coherent arguments for policies. He clings to one comfortable idea that he understands: a wall. It has the virtue of being a thing rather than an idea. In his one-note campaign he seems to have missed the irony of arguing in favor of one of the crudest tools in any government’s arsenal: a symbol of political failure that even Ronald Reagan understood when he challenged Mikhail Gorbachev to get rid of Berlin’s concrete barrier. A wall was perhaps a more appropriate military weapon in the 14th Century than it is now.
Eloquent and forceful advocacy is not dead. But Washington D.C. is no longer one of its natural homes.
Because I teach advocacy, my courses these days come with a caution to my students to aim higher than the rhetoric coming from the White House and other corners of Washington. Eloquent and forceful advocacy is not dead. But Washington D.C. is no longer one of its natural homes. When “bye bye” is the President’s way of ending negotiations with other political leaders, we hear yet again a rhetoric of petulance that is more appropriate to a child than a leader of a great nation.
A far better model is on view almost daily in the form of the current Speaker of Britain’s House of Commons. I’ve been on a busman’s holiday recently following the often dismal Brexit debate unfolding in London. The tense standoff involving elected members to the Mother of Parliaments has been managed by John Bercow, whose job it is to bring order to a body that is always rowdy. The 55-year old former Conservative, the grandson of Romanian-Jewish immigrants, has been a formidable and sometimes controversial Speaker, lecturing members on their behavior and keeping the House more or less on schedule. He is also a marvel of fluency.
In the current climate of U.K. politics there are even more daily eruptions than usual in the compact chamber, mostly motivated by opposition to the Prime Minister’s plans for carrying out a divorce from the European Union. All things considered, it hasn’t gone well for Prime Minister Theresa May, her party, the Labour Party and other smaller factions in the body. Yet, the stunner is how well Bercow has managed the chaos.
Bercow has created some additional fury from the Tories in power, who claim that he is playing favorites in the ways he has adjudicated various amendments and procedures. Even so, if I were asked to give a student an immersion experience in hearing eloquent advocacy, I’d give them at least several hours of material showing Bercow presiding over debates in the Commons. He listens with precision and grace. And his answers and explanations to doubting members show a number of attributes of effective advocacy. He’s responsive, courteous, patient, forceful, and rarely at a loss in finding exactly the right words. He also seems to know the names and biographies of most of the body’s 650 members.
Here’s a sample of Bercow in the thick of it.
Recently he declined a member’s “point of order” asking the Leader of the Opposition to apologize for allegedly muttering the phrase “stupid woman” made after comments from Theresa May. The rules of most deliberative bodies do not allow personal attacks on members. But Bercow said that neither he nor his deputies heard the comment. His unpopular decision left him with the difficult task of making a case for not ruling on a possible verbal slight against May, even in the midst of the #MeToo era. If this is not Bercow’s finest hour, his efforts still illustrate how a master advocate articulates a position in the face of fierce resistance.
The coverage of the entire episode points to how feeble our political life has become.
Journalists and some Americans expressed amazement at the impromptu debate that broke out in the Oval Office on December 11. The President was meeting with Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer in the hope of coming to an agreement to keep the government funded into the new year. To the surprise of the Democratic leaders, Trump opened up the meeting to the press, who then scurried into the crowded space to record the conversation taking place inches away. For the next 17 minutes a sometimes rancorous discussion unfolded, especially after Trump indicated he would prefer to shut down the government than accept a bill without financing for the five-billion dollar folly of a border wall.
Pelosi and Schumer were not pleased. For them, “debate” usually means reading prepared remarks to empty chambers. They expected a private discussion rather than an event that gave the impression that they had been sandbagged. Trump professed his pleasure for the open meeting, noting with a half smile that it was an example of “transparency.” And so the bickering continued, with both democrats claiming there was very little legislative support for his project.
The President and former reality television star seemed to love the moment. But in truth he’s not a very good debater; in this instance he gave up too much to his opponents. Using his preferred style of bluster, he overreached by taking full responsibility for any eventual government shutdown. He said it would be worth the price of improved American security.
Aside from this bogus false choice, Trump clearly had forgotten what misery that closed government facilities can cause in a holiday season when the need for them is near its peak. Want to visit a national monument? Think again. Want to get information on medical and social security services? Not if the government is mostly closed.
The coverage of the entire episode points to how feeble our political life has become. We welcome the shelter of like-minded folks on the news channels that many of us watch. In these polarizing days even our choice of who to spend time with is weighed based on the known political views of the others. Moreover, as a nation we are less likely to entertain a full debate on the merits of an idea unless a member of the press is present to change the topic when things begin to get interesting.
The Prime Minister in the House of Commons
At the same time that there was this momentary public airing of differences, British legislators were still engaged in a nearly continuous public debate–much of it within the House of Commons–exchanging pleas to move beyond the self-inflicted morass of Brexit. To be sure, it is a mess; few are interested in throwing Prime Minister Theresa May a lifeline. However this quandary is resolved, it is likely to cost Britain a great deal in terms of its national prestige and economy.
But here’s the point: though we may be justified in giving our British cousins a rap on the head for this quagmire, give the country credit for airing the issues fully, and with the expectation that the Prime Minister will participate in days and and many hours of open debate with her opponents. Britain and other parliamentary democracies have woven debate into their system. True to form, May has been a dutiful if uninspired advocate throughout this exhaustive process.
The British expect that a public official should be able to answer questions about key facts, the likely effects of policy actions, and best estimates of the consequences of a changed relationship with the European Union. Public debate is a fixed expectation. In the United States it is such an unexpected event that it gets its own “Breaking News!” graphic and an excited cadre of talking heads. All of this in an age where we have convinced ourselves that we are more connected than ever.
