Lessons from our system

Why compromise matters

A pro pos Bangladesh, which we discussed yesterday, more chaos likely will ensue long-time Prime Minister Hasina fleeing the country today following several weeks of protests. Overturning a government rarely leads to an easy period for any country. Hasina had imposed a new quota system for government jobs which aroused great anger. The Supreme Court revised down the quota but that step did little to satisfy mounting public anger over the government’s actions in several areas.

Some of the challenge Hasina confronted was her longevity in office, having been first elected in 2008. She and her Awami League political movement were seen as dictatorial. And yet other problems resulted from the seemingly generalized anxiety we see across the world today, arguably stronger than the average first Monday in August. The world just seems on edge, as conflicts rage, elections await, and In any case, she went into exile so time will tell what ensues but a non-democratic change of regime almost invariably incurs substantial surprise for the country.

We discuss participatory (I don’t think the term democracy really hits what we seek some times so I don’t use it as often as most people) versus autocratic or authoritarian governance quite a bit on Actions but how often do we really ask why that is so? Do we recognize what terms mean in practice or self-identify by catch phrases we don’t even understand but have taken on memes in the contemporary era?

Democracy is, as we likely remember, a term the Greek philosophers used twenty-five hundred years ago. Dictionary.com defines it as “government by the people; a form of government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised directly by them or by their elected agents under a free electoral system”. Great!

Does that mean 340 million people in this country can agree on governing or that power is vested in the people? According to the Pew Research Center, pretty generally seen as non-partisan organization, 49% of registered voters in this country are Democrats or lean Democratic while 48% of the registered voters are Republican or tend towards Republicans. Huh. That means a fairly neat split, doesn’t it?

Wait, what is the difficulty embedded in those numbers? Does everyone really participate?

Registered voters in 2022 included 69.1% of those over the age of 18 who met the criteria to vote. Those criteria, according to the Constitution, are that the individual

—holds U.S. citizenship (yes, that is actually law so no, Congress did not need the showboating earlier this year about illegals voting as they are prohibited already except in a few local jurisdictions),

—meets residency in the jurisdiction where the individual seeks to vote,

—is eighteen years of age on election day, and

—is duly registered under the jurisdiction’s laws for voting.

But fully a third of the country who in theory meet these criteria do not register to vote as we are not one of the countries mandating participation in elections. It’s a choice for those in this country rather than a requirement.

And too many people think gerrymandering, the reaffirming of electoral districts ever decade to following Census data, invalidates everything because it allows absurdly shaped districts. Both parties do it at the state level where the district carving occurs per the Constitution. So, that issue is a major discouraging factor.

Beyond the question of registered voters being a large but far from universal population to make decisions, the polarization in the our political system raises another tragedy on display on 6 January: will adherents from either party disregard election outcomes to impose their own will on the nation? This is a huge question that the U.S. Founders struggled with as they feared the outcome of voting could put a distinct minority in charge over a majority. This is one of the most fundamental battles in our political debate yet two hundred forty years after we endorsed this Constitution, we retain deep divisions.

The Founders addressed it by not implementing a democracy where the will of the people (could those people be trusted to “do the right thing”, many wondered?) is unfettered. Instead, the Founders crafted, through compromise, debate, and further compromise that hot summer of 1787 in Philadelphia, a labyrinth of checks and balances to assure that our system keep some eccentric equilibrium that does not move too far from the center because they preferred moderation over radicalism. We are, as a result, a Republic rather than a democracy.

Some of the behavior particularly in the House of Representatives over our history, a body with more people on either and both extremes of the political spectrum, embodies this radicalism, particularly now. Remember we say the House is closer to the people, because of the districts containing fewer voters so less watering down of positions will get someone elected, but those in Washington today seem to think they merely need electing rather than to govern.

I am not steeped in political philosophy as so many of my colleagues at Notre Dame, a deep well of that field. The first graduate student I knew in the program (and at least an occasional reader of Actions) is much more able to explain the philosophical roots of differing systems of power than I could ever fathom so perhaps Ines will weigh in. But I do know that I personally value a participatory system because it offers participants the opportunity to kvetch, to register their dislike, to show their support, and to periodically pronounce yea or nay to politicians.

In an authoritarian system, the dominant coice often silences criticism, comment, or anything other than adoration. That hardly works for a country as vast as ours. If Bangladesh with 170,000,000 citizens is undergoing pent up frustration with a single-minded ruler over fifteen years, how would we do with twice as many people being disregarded over even a decade? Not well.

Participatory systems offer not only the ability to let off steam but to provide smart and confident (I realize those two things are far from certainties with any politician anywhere) elected officials with feedback for course corrections. In our system, we hold elections at regular intervals among other reasons to provide precisely that type of reaction to those governing. Under effective rule of law, those governing ultimately address the feedback or they go packing.

Democrats held the majority in the House between 1930 and 1994, except for 1946-48. Their hold on the Senate lasted between 1954 and 1980. In both bodies, when Republicans took back the majority, the elections were decisive rather than a small shift because these were major decisive messages from the voters. Pent up Republican frustration at their inability to alter the nation’s trajectory included radicalized voices, such as Newt Gingrich as Speaker of the House between 1995 and 1998. (The voters were similarly decisive when they elected a Democratic House in 2006 following the Iraq War.) At the same time, Republicans systematically began focusing on the state and local elections where they could groom a new generation of much more conservative candidates, some of who serve in the Congress today while others were deemed again too radical for our moderate tendencies.

A common complaint about our country is that Congress or the Presidency ignore the will of the people. While I understand the charge, it strikes me as failing to grasp that we have the opportunity to vote for individuals who we expect to abide by our preferences and values. Truth is that we vote for people in government to act on our behalf rather than to enact our wishes.

Certainly parliamentary systems with their proportional representation systems probably mirror public opinion a bit more closely than ours does, holding those who serve to accountability more readily. A government losing its majority falls unless it immediately cobbles together a coalition to maintain a majority (ask Netanyahu about this as he lives it daily). Coalitions can still provide a majority without which, the leader loses power.

In our system, we empower our representatives for a fixed period so it behooves us to pay attention to what our candidates say they will do. This is what is so frustrating about the non-policy insults that both parties, but particularly today’s Republicans, toss out about lofty social policies rather than suggesting actual policy positions plus paths to achieve them. For Republicans, part of that is their frustration that they have been a minority party viz-a-viz Democrats for almost a century so they have lacked power. Power to assure their preferences, as any government would desire.

But they lost track of the reality that power is a means rather than an end. Any party can have power but things don’t become enacted by fiat—that is authoritarian. But, in a participatory system, the voters register a preference on election day, then turn it over to the elected to achieve policy. In our byzantine system, the election is the easier part, contrary to apparent assumptions.

In the end, the GOP’s lack of governing undermines their aspirations. Republicans are no more united, once the Dobbs decision eradicated the abortion issue in 2022, than Democrats on a host of policy questions but both parties have forgotten than elections are a means to be in position to govern with methodical steps to an end rather than hoisting cultural banners as if the wind will carry pixie dust from the unfurled banners into policies. Far too many people in both parties forget that compromise is not a bad word but a method rather than a despicable end unto itself. Political gullibility and civic illiteracy allow disingenuous and infeasible political arguments to take root.

All of which takes us back to governing. The Founders had a reason they wanted a complex system to encourage participation but not necessarily a feisty but distinct minority view being imposed on the majority. And they certainly did not want anything that occurred rapidly, preferring a gradual, if not glacial pace to allow all views heard even if not enacted.

I don’t know how the Founders would have reacted to today’s policy conundra. There were voices who would have encouraged violence to gain their ends but they were few and far between. The heart of the U.S. political system is compromise, give and take, and negotiation. Compromise does not mean surrendering everything but giving enough to get the ultimate prize: KYEOTP as my little signs used to say. Keep Your Eye On the Prize. Right now the prize (seems to me) is getting elected rather than improving the country for future generations. Sigh.

Hasina failed at satisfying a substantial portion of Bangladesh’s citizenry in their parliamentary system, even if she was elected four times to the majority. By accounts, she was not a compromiser. Now, a vacuum exists to address who will govern and what policies that government will pursue to satisfy people with pent up frustration to get their preferences in place. As I noted yesterday, time will tell how this goes as I cannot predict with any assurance beyond expecting they should buckle their seatbelts for a rough ride ahead.

As for our own system—the one over which we have control but must work for a vast population with radically divergent expectations and (increasingly) values, and an array of profound challenges to address, I wish we would think about our system a bit more than we do. I wish we simply read about our system instead of assuming we know what the Constitution says.

We can, of course, change that document as President Biden is trying to do with the judiciary—a change I understand but don’t support. It’s not that the Founders were perfect—they were not as they treated both slaves and women as second class citizens at best—but the system had its strengths. Because I know actions create consequences, I worry about the unintended problems that result from making seemingly logical revisions to an incredibly delicate system. Yes, it’s endured for almost a quarter millennium but it’s still pretty intricate.

Just strikes me that perhaps examining our role and assumptions about who and what we are might need some revisions as well.

I welcome your thoughts, your likely rebuttals, and your suggestions. If you value this column, please feel free to circulate it. I welcome anyone signing up for Actions, especially if you can subscribe with financial support. But, in any case, I welcome you as a reader.

I am sorting through my 8,900 pictures to clear up some space. I came across this springtime gem last night while the temperatures are decidedly summery.

Be well and be safe. FIN

“2022 Voting and Registration Data Now Available”, www.census.gov, 2 May 2023, retrieved at https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2023/2022-voting-registration.html

“Changing Partisan Coalitions in a Politically Divided Nation”, Pew Research Center, 9 April 2024, retrieved at https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2024/04/09/the-partisanship-and-ideology-of-american-voters/

“Who Can and Cannot Vote”, https://usa.gov, retrieved at https://www.usa.gov/who-can-vote