Native son Henry Clay, who made a name for himself achieving solutions through the art of compromise, must be rolling in his grave these days.
In this technologically isolating world, we as a people have become so sharply divided by forces that stand to gain by pitting us against one another that we seem to be losing touch with empathy, a human trait fundamental to the core philosophies of all of the world’s major religions, and essential to creating and sustaining the interpersonal connections that produce solutions to the problems that vex us.
Our polarized political culture and a deliberately partisan and increasingly less inquisitive media seem to have given up on the difficult work of getting into another’s shoes for a look at differing views of life, discovering and attempting to understand the contexts that inform their positions on things that matter to us all.
It's been striking in recent weeks to hear a theme emerge from conversations with a couple of Lexington business owners, a rabbi, a banker, an artist, a minister, a professor, a retiree — even a politician — each moved to express in his or her own way and without prompting that we have lost our ability and perhaps our will to work for compromise on complex issues. Each of these individuals expressed the same concern: that this failure or outright refusal to recognize spectrums of views is the single most important obstacle to overcoming or solving the most pressing challenges of our times.
For many difficult issues confronting us on local, state and federal levels, little in the way of solutions resulting from good-faith bargaining seems evident these days.
The question is: Why?
I think it’s because we have a culture in which we no longer can expect our leaders to show us how compromise is accomplished — to lead by example. If anything, it’s become the norm to refuse to do the hard work of searching for common ground.
Yet, flexibility, adaptability and compromise are nearly always the leadership qualities that produce results that are acceptable to majorities, allowing us to move on.
We seem to now have leaders who make every effort to secure their own particular sets of interests while going all out to ensure that those with opposing views and/or interests are undermined to the point of near incapacitation. When is the last time you heard a campaigning candidate invite his or her opponents to come to the table and work out differences?
These thought leaders are pervasive in our lives. They are our elected officials, media personalities, editorial boards, cause advocates and even businesses with social or political agendas.
Regardless of the truism that nothing in life is ever absolute or certain, we see a legislative culture that routinely stakes out hardened, unforgiving positions on very serious issues that impact us all — none of which is, in truth, black-and-white simple.
A case in point: Unless Congress acts before this New Year’s Eve, we will, under the Budget Control Act of 2011, ring in 2013 with a cocktail of deep and widespread spending cuts blended with momentous tax hikes. By most accounts, this is expected to extract some $600 billion from the U.S. economy. Yet, as of this writing, there are no indications of any serious negotiations in search of compromise among leaders of a lame-duck Congress and the White House, or their staffs.
As a Reuters analysis states, “The United States runs the risk of a recession far deeper than many investors and policymakers may think if lawmakers fail to avert looming tax hikes and cuts to public spending.”
Fear of plunging over this “fiscal cliff” has established a persistent reluctance among the owners of businesses large and small, right here in Lexington, to risk capital on expansion and growth. In many cases, it’s had a paralyzing effect on jobs creation just when that’s needed most.
Interview after interview reveals business leaders practicing great caution against engaging in levels of risk that would otherwise, in a more encouraging atmosphere, be considered acceptable. It is why recovery from the Great Recession and renewed economic growth have been slow in coming.
The election is behind us, and now we’re sorting through its outcomes and implications. It’s a good time to visit those you’ve elected with some reasonable expectations.
The litmus test, we believe, should be a willingness and an ability to collaborate across political barriers, producing results with built-in measures of success. We need to actually witness this. We need to see that our elected representatives can get along with each other, at least to an extent that gets things done.
Compromise itself is not an end, but a means to achieve an end: to move forward with an action. Its role is to allow decisions to be made and implemented. That’s how things have been done in our system. It’s how we have, until lately, managed to maintain a free and ordered civilized society that moves ahead as one people.
It’s really pretty simple. Always has been. To get what you want, you have to give a little. Refusal to budge — as we have witnessed on Capitol Hill — brings little in meaningful returns.
The experience of recent years reveals a disturbing incapacity to recognize that this country was founded on the notion of diversity as a commonality: empathy as the pathway to compassion.
The community, state or national leader who is the first to make it once again fashionable to engage in the tough work of seeking and achieving compromise will win our highest respect and regard.