Somehow we are going to have to get beyond celebrating the unilateralism that is our preferred rhetoric.
Lawrence Wright’s book on the intense negotiations that led to the historical Camp David Accords is a timely indicator of what is so frequently missing in our politics. Thirteen Days in September (2014) documents the efforts of President Jimmy Carter to find a way out of the chronic Arab/Israeli impasse, working with Israel’s Menachem Begin and Egypt’s Anwar Sadat as his partners. Without doubt the recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize had—and still has—the instincts of a peacemaker. By contrast, prior to the negotiations in 1978 Begin and Sadat had contributed more than their share to the periodic blood-letting that still defines the disputed borders that surround the Sinai Peninsula. In modern usage both would have justifiably been labeled terrorists. And yet Carter put his already shaky presidency on the line to cloister these foes in the mountains of western Maryland. There was only an outside chance that Begin and Sadat could be induced to produce a lasting peace.
It was the ultimate act of political courage. Presidents and congressional politicians rarely put themselves on so uncertain a course unless there are guaranteed outcomes. And that’s a problem. A politician who won’t risk failed efforts at conciliation is little more than a poseur: a pretender to the role of policy-maker.
The challenge of negotiating differences is made worse because of an old American habit of honoring heroes who are supposedly unsullied by the impulse to compromise. We cherish the self-made person, the inner-directed leader, the lone single agent who rejects anything less than what they brought to the bargaining table. This preference plays out in the narrative tropes that show up in our love of John Wayne’s film characters or James Bond’s free-style execution of British foreign policy. We like our heroes to be dominant, assertive, fearless and ready to bolt at the first suggestion that they might make a concession. And so they continue to come in waves of narratives that celebrate intellectual unilateralism: everyone from cinema superheroes, to larger-than-life thinkers like Apple’s Steve Jobs. Even the small screen cherishes the mini-rebellions of office workers stuck in the anonymity of drab cubicle farms.
Our preference for the defiant loner has grown so great that words to describe the team player now read like labels of surrender. “Compromise,” “concession,” “conciliation,” and “mediation” all carry the odor of appeasement. And so our interest in performing the rhetoric of defiance is self-defining; its a cheap way to create a persona suggesting “strong values” and ostensibly settled thinking. Even history’s great conciliators—among them: Nelson Mandela, Henry Clay, Abraham Lincoln—seem more distant than the characters we conjure up to illustrate “decisive” and “uncompromising” leadership. One can only guess at what former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani had in mind when he called Russia’s increasingly dictatorial Vladimir Putin a true “leader.” The statement is a reminder that unearned certainty can be the perfect sign of a fool.
Carter’s reputation is always caught in a vice of opposing impulses. His willingness to listen to all sides makes him look weak. And yet the rhetorical opposition rituals we seem to favor have the effect of releasing their participants from any obligation to find common-ground with others. It’s an unhelpful kind of opaqueness that fits our age of self-absorption. But it comes at the expense of the chance to promote joint action and shared beliefs.
If we are wondering where to begin, I suggest that we reconsider the kinds of people we want to serve in legislative offices. Deliberative bodies require deliberators. And yet our Congress is filled with self-styled media stars who show little interest in finding ways to attain mutual consent. They show up for their close-ups in hearings. But they are often absent from caucus rooms where differences must get hammered out.
Somehow we are going to have to get beyond celebrating the unilateralism that is now our preferred rhetoric. It’s a recommendation that especially holds for our chosen leaders, but also for most of us as we weigh the need for ideological purity against the more functional need to work with others.
The First Amendment is the best part of our flawed constitution. It’s also an essential license needed to secure the discussion that every society needs in order to renew itself.
I don’t share the unqualified enthusiasm that others express for the timeless relevance of our Constitution. It’s enumeration of congressional and presidential powers is badly out of sync with our political times. And as a roadmap for a republic, it retains some of the offenses to the idea of direct democracy that were built in its earlier iterations. For example, Article One enshrines the fact that states like Rhode Island and California will have the same levels of representation in the Senate. Irrespective of population size, all states get two Senators. But in terms of modern ideas of direct proportionality, California should have at least 35 more members in that body than the lovely but minuscule Ocean State.
In addition, the elaborate checks and balances the founders wanted as a remedies against warring political “factions” have produced just the reverse. For many reasons gridlock is now structured into the system. The young adults I teach may represent the first American generation to never see the kind of Congressional leadership that was capable of partnering with a President to effectively govern. Examples of impressive Senate leadership–Johnson, Fulbright, Baker, among others–come from the not-so-recent past. Little wonder that for my students the body politic barely has a pulse.
What saves our Constitution is mostly its liberalizing Amendments, with some (The First, Thirteenth and Nineteenth) much better than others (The Second).
One could argue with some oversimplicity that, along with the idea of the national parks, the best idea we have given to ourselves and the world is The First Amendment. Its wording is refreshingly simple and free from a long list of exemptions. The Founders never gave the world a better model for freedom than this short and unambiguous paragraph.
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
This is a good time to celebrate the Amendment, which has most recently given aggrieved citizens in Ferguson Missouri the right to march and be heard. Members of the community knew they had that right, and so far many–though not all–have exercised it reasonably. As in Ferguson, the challenge is to restrain the natural but sometimes misplaced interest by law enforcement officials to rein in crowds with uncertain intentions.
Sometimes the Amendment is used to justify vast and uneven distributions of media power, as in the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United vs. the F.C.C. ruling. The decision essentially the use of money in a campaign as a form of speech. Even constitutional lawyer Floyd Abrams, who inexplicably likes the ruling, concedes that the court’s obliteration of legal limits on campaign spending will give the wealthy vastly greater access to America’s voters.
I think Abrams is wrong to accept the court’s logic. Who knew the Justices could so blithely misread the Amendment as a franchise to the wealthy to dominate campaigns? So far most corporations have been more or less circumspect about funding the “superpacs” the decision allows. But we’ll be lucky if our democracy survives the tsunami of campaign cash that will come to favored candidates from trade and ideological groups.
All the more reason, perhaps, to raise a little hell as invited by The First Amendment. We are free to rally, march, write, publish, blog, carry signs, hold meeting and vigils, criticize, seek out lawmakers, pray and meet with who we please.
Of course, anything like throwing explosives at party-goers should not be a protected. That bit of misplaced hell-raising is part of my family’s lore. Many years ago my uncle supposedly made his way into Denver from the family mine in the nearby mountains to register his frustration over the slight of not being invited to a party. He scattered the crowd quickly by tossing a lit dynamite starter on to the dance floor at a downtown country club. In his mind he was perhaps just using the tools for the family trade to register his objections. But “speech” it wasn’t. I’m proud to report that he later redeemed himself as a prodigy geologist at The Colorado School of Mines, moving on just before he died to help Japan set up its own Bureau of Mines.
But the point remains. The First Amendment is the best instrument for a vigorous civil society in an otherwise flawed constitution. It’s also an essential license needed to secure the right of discussion that every society needs in order to renew itself.
