Thursday, December 07, 2006
Moderate? Neutral?
The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in times of great moral crisis, maintain their neutrality. –DanteAmerica seems extremely polarized but it has been said that much of America is somewhere in the middle. Being neutral is NOT the answer. Moderates are basically sheep that have no passionate opinions and follow the latest popular movements. In the debate of left vs. right I don’t consider myself in the middle. I’m hard left on some issues and hard right on others.
Moving beyond the polarization of left vs. right does not mean that we should be neutral on issues or give up our integrity on certain values. Non-partisanship means that we should passionately focus on common desired results and then compromise on the political methods to create those results. There are many areas in which both sides agree on the result but just can’t see past their partisan view of the methods. Here are some good examples:
• focus on peace and compromise on the methods to achieve peace
• focus on reducing abortions and compromise on the methods to reduce them
• focus on fair taxation and compromise on methods of collection
• focus on creating strong families and compromise on the definition of a family
• focus on health care for all Americans and compromise on delivery of services
• focus on public safety and compromise on methods of law enforcement
The best way to achieve bipartisanship is to first agree on some desired results or a “definition of success” and then be willing to experiment with different methods. The recent IRAQ study group has made a step in the right direction. In my opinion they were too soft and too late but what they did accomplish is they gave the president a safe way out. They gave him a way to say “I’m sorry I screwed up” without actually having to say it. There is a part of me that would rather see him confessing his sins and crying like a baby on world-wide television begging forgiveness from the widows and orphans he has created by starting an unjust war (picture Jimmy Swaggert at the UN). But one of the first rules in diplomacy is to give your opponent a way out so they can come out agreeing with you without feeling like they have been raked over the coals. I think that is what the president was looking for and I think he got it. I think he wanted a way out. The group showed a great deal of humility by selling their recommendations in this way. Now I hope he will take the same approach in the upcoming diplomatic conversations in the Middle East. We have to give them a graceful way into the talks and then setup a graceful way for them to go back to their people and change their policy without losing face. All of the great success stories in foreign policy have been built around this principle.
Unfortunately Bush mentioned in a press conference today that he may not understand this valuable lesson. He still wants to force foreign leaders to “give-in” just to get a seat at the negotiation table. That is bad policy and is exactly why we are in a mess. Instead we should agree to talks immediately. That gives these foreign leaders a political win in front of their citizens without us really having to give any tangible ground. It is easy if you are not focused on your own pride. In poker you sometimes have to give up on a small pot just to setup a big win later when the stakes are higher. He has to show some humility if he wants help paying the bill for our mess.
The American people are showing Bush a great deal of grace. Nobody is seriously calling for impeachment. Nobody is demanding that he turn himself and his cabinet over to the UN for committing war crimes and acting in war without their blessing. We are giving him a graceful way out. Now he just needs to take that opportunity before the window of grace closes. He needs to extend as much grace as he has just received.
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2 comments:
Interesting - you rail against moderates, but the approach you describe is what I understand to be the definition of a moderate--making pragmatic policy compromises in the interest of maximizing public welfare. Let's start with the list of objectives, you're saying, and then be creative about how to achieve those objectives, even if it means giving a policy a try that someone from the other side of the aisle came up with. You sound like a moderate to me.
Is it ever okay not to have a strong policy opinion? Think about the dilemma of responding to terrorist aggression. If we fight back, we run the risk of further damaging our international image, in effect spawning more extremists. (In fact, it seems that this is what has happened.) But if we don't respond, we let the extremists get away with truly unacceptable behavior, and we risk sending the signal that we will tolerate it. So what do we do? It's just tough. It's a perennial foreign policy question that requires brilliance, wisdom, and artistry to answer at any given moment. And that's exactly what we'd expect, since we're talking about human behavior here, which is neither predictable nor controllable.
Given that policy issues like these are tricky by their very nature, why is it so important to be either "hard left" or "hard right"?
That is a reasonable observation, but the key is to avoid the "neutral" approach that breeds apathy and usually keeps the status quo in power and never makes progress. The problem with the "right" and in some instances the "left" is that they are too focused on their methods rather than the goals. The "methods" have become issues themselves. Take abortion or drug use for instance, why is it so important to focus on the legality of the issues? Both sides would prefer less abortions and less drug use, but it is as if we lost focus on the lives behind these issues and all we can see is legalization debate. The result is that nothing ever happens. We need more passion instead of politicians that are walking on egg shells to be sure they appear "moderate". The point of my post was a disgust with a system that encourages a "do nothing" attitude by our government.
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