Why this liberal is giving up on compromise for now

By Tom Krattenmaker
USA Today, February 4, 2020

Disgusted by the Republicans’ hear-no-evil-see-no-evil conduct at the impeachment trial? By middle-finger gestures like the president’s trade-deal signing ceremony last week that excluded the Democrats who were key to the measure’s passage?

I certainly am. Which is why, for now, I am giving up on compromise. 

A temperate person by nature, I try to downsize conflicts and find commonalities with my political opposites. Having absorbed the lessons of my social studies and political science classes, I’ve long believed in the necessity of the country’s major parties hashing out their differences, finding solutions both sides can live with and moving the country forward.

Hell, when I came of age, major figures in Washington like Democratic House Speaker Tip O’Neill and Republican President Ronald Reagan were doing just that. I often didn’t like the outcome but accepted that Democrats had to give if they were going to get.

The time for give and take has passed

Those days are gone. Our current political impasse runs so deep, and one would-be compromise partner is so recalcitrant, that I’ve given up hope for the near term that the Democrats and Republicans can work together on the country’s urgent challenges. With the fate of our democracy and planet at stake — sorry, that’s not hyperbole — would-be conciliators can’t afford to continue extending olive branches only to have them shoved back in our faces.

For progressives and liberals and the Democratic Party that more or less represents them, there is only one solution to the national impasse: resounding political victory. 

Climate writer David Roberts speaks truth when he points out that tribalism and polarization have driven Republicans to an untenable position on the environmental crisis that is the defining challenge of the new decade. It just won’t do to have one major party continue to deny reality and defend the status quo — or worse, push policies and practices that go in the opposite direction of solutions. Same for the GOP’s failure to confront attacks on our democratic institutions and governmental integrity by the current president. 

As Roberts said on a recent podcast of “The Ezra Klein Show,” liberals love to be reasonable, marshal facts and arguments and seek ways to make progress. Those don’t work right now: “There is no level of calm, reasonable, open friendliness that can bridge the gap that exists now.” He said, “I’ve seen it tried in the climate space for so long, so earnestly, and with such good faith and with zero results.”

If the GOP is not willing to engage, there’s only one remedy. The people must vote them out of power.

Yes, today’s partisan divide is lamentable. It makes our country weaker, among other problems. The deep fissure between the two Americas is what created the opening for Russians to interfere in our 2016 presidential election. A more united nation is a more secure nation. But, as the “bi” would imply, bipartisanship takes two.

It’s just lazy cynicism to shrug our shoulders, as some are wont to do, and throw out lines like “both sides are to blame” and “they’re all corrupt.”

Conservatives have gone to extremes 

As pointed out by political scientists Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein, and as measured by studies like the Manifesto Project, today’s Republicans are significantly more conservative than the Democrats are liberal. Don’t be thrown off by the outsize attention devoted to firebrand Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and her wing of the party. Voting records show that House Democrats are, by and large, more moderate than leftist.

Perhaps it was inevitable that political compromise would go the way of the fax machine. We’re living, after all, in an age of hyper individualism and personal authenticity. The zeitgeist pushes us to be true to ourselves, pursue our dreams and believe what we will. Think about the TV commercials and a million other messages that the culture whispers in our ears: Don’t compromise, they tell us. The vigorous, exciting, authentic life is the uncompromising life.

Moreover, people’s very identity and humanity are often at stake in the politics we wage these days. For example, if I am an LGBT person fighting for my equal rights, am I going to be OK with a meet-in-the-middle compromise that implies I’m less than fully human?L

Then there’s President Donald Trump and the danger he poses to both our institutions of democracy and our ability to confront the growing threat of climate disaster. If Republicans are going to continue making Trump loyalty their highest priority — higher than protecting the rule of law that he disdains, higher than abiding by the constitutional checks and balances that he smashes, higher than the fidelity to truth and facts that he mocks, higher than addressing a global environmental crisis he does not understand — how can Democrats treat them as negotiating partners?

I hold out hope for interparty cooperation, collaboration, even friendship in the future. But the only way out of the present jam is for liberals and Democrats to “bull through,” as Roberts puts it. That means winning offices and amassing the political power necessary to start moving government in the right direction.

If you keep trying to work things out with an adversary who uses your naive good faith against you, you’re no longer a champion of compromise. You’re a chump. That’s something Democrats can’t afford to be any longer.

Tom Krattenmaker, a member of USA TODAY’s Board of Contributors, writes on religion and values in public life. His latest book is “Confessions of a Secular Jesus Follower: Finding Answers in Jesus for Those Who Don’t Believe.” Follow him on Twitter: @TKrattenmaker.