In the first part of this argument, I tried to persuade you that conflict is a normal part human interaction, and that it can be good for us if done in a constructive way. I distinguished a constructive form of conflict, which I called “arguing”, from a destructive form, which I called “fighting.” I then asserted that the Founding Fathers recognized this distinction and set up a system that would require argument rather than fighting.
Are we good so far? If so, I now want to suggest that a critical and defining problem in the US right now is that politicians have abandoned arguing, and instead embrace fighting as a more useful way to run their business – the business of politics.
Businesses naturally prefer monopoly to competition, so it should be no surprise that those in the business of politics try to avoid competition. The goal is a “safe” seat, where threats of losing a primary or an election are minimized. Gerrymandering, voter suppression, and massive campaign war chests are effective tools to dominate the competition. More insidiously, avoiding principled stands on difficult issues lets a politician work both sides of the fence. One great benefit of negative campaigning is that you don’t really have to be for anything – you just have to be against your opponent.
Once in Congress, the choice is there again. Work across party lines to achieve consensus by argument based on principles, or use issues to win elections so that you can rule by majority control without debating anything. The last thing you want to do in this system is to resolve wedge issues like abortion, gun control, or immigration that are so useful for raising campaign funds and firing up the base. Avoiding argument becomes paramount, and a panoply of tools has grown up.
The filibuster is a familiar example. In the filibuster, a politician pretends to be debating, but does anyone expect that reading the Bible, or all of Julia Child’s recipes, will persuade the other side? Filibuster abandons the constitutional system of argument, and adopts a fighting strategy of obstruction until we get our way. Obstruction is what is left when your side has run out of arguments. And there are so many creative ways to obstruct.
- It begins in the cloakroom, where leaders determine what matters come to the floor for a vote, regardless of how many members would support it. Putting the decision about what we should do, or even talk about, in the hands of one person is the definition of autocracy.
- The Hastert rule is designed to prevent bipartisanship, since only matters approved by a majority of the majority party (as little as 26% of the politicians) get to dictate what gets considered. In reality, the Hastert rule provides a fig leaf to cover autocratic rule from the cloakroom.
- The Senate hold might be seen as a professional courtesy, but, in fact, it gives one senator a veto power beyond that given to the President by the Constitution. All it takes is one staffer to report that the Senator objects to a bill, implicitly threatening to filibuster, and the bill is dead.
- It is hard to imagine a better tool to avoid argument than the secret senate hold. Not only are we not able, as a nation, to debate an issue that a significant majority of the voters approve of, we are not entitled to know why we can’t debate it.
- When a significant bill makes it to the floor, it is generally part of an omnibus bill, with dozens – or hundreds – of unrelated provisions, making it impossible to say which part of the bill a representative was for, or against.
- Massive, inscrutable bills, written by leadership or lobbyists, are released to the members with no time to read them, let alone debate them.
What is the virtue of the above tactics? Quite simply, they let the House or Senate leader “protect” their members by not bringing up issues that might require them to cast a vote — or argue a position — that might lessen their chances of being re-elected, with the unthinkable consequence that the party might lose power. And they keep campaign contributions flowing by letting the big contributors actually write the legislation.
We divorce elections from issues, and make them so expensive that only the wealthy, or those indebted to the wealthy, can hope to participate. It is hard to see how we can solve any of our pressing problems when our problem-solving process is so broken.
Giving up on Congress does not help. The same problem exists in state legislatures. Even if there were a direct way to get things done without legislation, citizens can’t argue if they can’t agree on facts. And we have corporations in the media and on the internet designed to profit from misinforming people, and thereby keeping them angry and engaged. If people will not pay to see a good argument, but will pay to see a food fight, what do you think we will find on our screens?
What can we do to push our country to engage in the arguments it needs to be having if we don’t want to descend into being controlled by the best fighters?
- We can have good arguments with people we know, being careful to do it the right way.
- When we hear bad arguments on our televisions, we can change the channel. Voting with our time and attention can be as powerful as the votes we cast by ballot. When an internet site relies on bad arguments, we can stop going there, and encourage people we know to avoid it. Unfortunately pointing out the bad arguments on the site itself is counterproductive, since it just increases traffic.
- We have to reform the business of politics to eliminate all the ways politicians have built up to avoid competition. Politicians will not compete, and will not make good arguments, unless we make them. So make them.
