Arizona Sen. John McCain employs the pages of the Washington Post to promote an op-ed calling for a return to the procedures, style, and decorum of the Senate of a generation ago:
Most of us share Heather Heyer’s values, not the depravity of the man who took her life. We are the country that led the free world to victory over fascism and dispatched communism to the ash heap of history. We are the superpower that organized not an empire, but an international order of free, independent nations that has liberated more people from poverty and tyranny than anyone thought possible in the age of colonies and autocracies.
Our shared values define us more than our differences. And acknowledging those shared values can see us through our challenges today if we have the wisdom to trust in them again.
Congress will return from recess next week facing continued gridlock as we lurch from one self-created crisis to another. We are proving inadequate not only to our most difficult problems but also to routine duties. Our national political campaigns never stop. We seem convinced that majorities exist to impose their will with few concessions and that minorities exist to prevent the party in power from doing anything important.
That’s not how we were meant to govern. Our entire system of government — with its checks and balances, its bicameral Congress, its protections of the rights of the minority — was designed for compromise. It seldom works smoothly or speedily. It was never expected to.
There are multiple different issues being presented here. First, is it really true that there is broad agreement among senators on values? I’m not so sure. Second, do the values shared among senators comport with public values? On that I’m almost positive they do not. Third, what would impel senators to abandon confrontation in favor of compromise? I see nothing other than a spirit of statesmanship that has been absent for decades.
Finally, what form would compromises take? Historically, there have been two different strategies for compromise. On form was compromise within legislation; the other was compromise on a package of bills. In the former strategy neither side got everything they wanted but met somewhere in the middle. In the latter on some pieces of legislation one side’s view would prevail; on another the other side’s. Frequently, these packages of bills included allowing senators to “bring home the bacon”—the abjured “earmarks”.
Again, from a historical standpoint past compromises were nearly always promoted by centrists who are no longer an active presence in the Senate. In today’s Congress the least progressive Democratic senator is more progressive than the most progressive Republican senator. The middle has disappeared and Democrats and Republicans have next to no basis other than personal self-interest on which to base compromise.
If none of what would be necessary to turn the Congress from what it is into an institution that serves the needs of the broad base of the American people seems very likely to you, then at least you and I are in broad agreement.
Arizona Sen. John McCain employs the pages of the Washington Post to promote an op-ed calling for a return to the procedures, style, and decorum of the Senate of a generation ago
I suppose it would be much easier for him to skim more graft for him & his that way.