It’s Big and Not So Beautiful — In Process or Result
July 1, 2025
We are caught up in partisan governance, which isn’t to be mistaken for good governance.
Good governance would be based on the merits of the argument, carefully weighing the competing interests, acting consistently over a period of time. It would be based on rational discussions and logic, such as by using the polarity management approach that has been advocated by Our Common Purpose. The objective, not always achieved, is doing the best we can, all things considered.
Partisan governance, meanwhile, serves a combination of ideology and political self-interest. It fulfills campaign promises, satisfying the wishes of one-half the population. That necessitates abrupt reversals of previous legislative or executive acts, often with just the stroke of a pen, that were friendly to the other half of the country. The objective is partisan advantage that can advance a one-sided vision of America.
This partisan approach is taken by both sides, but we’re watching it unfold big-time with the President’s “big, beautiful bill.” No argument, nearly 1,000 pages is big. Beauty on the other hand is in the mind of the beholder. Even Republican lawmakers can’t escape the blemishes. What’s worse? Cutting the legs out from under Medicaid or cutting the legs out from the 2016 tax cut?
Whichever way it goes will not be good for the country. Not in the result, not in the process.
The Trump Administration, in party with the Republican majority in Congress, are of one mind that our policies are too liberal and our spending too lavish on safety-net programs such as SNAP and Medicaid.
They reflect a deep-seated resentment among hard-working Americans who don’t earn a lot that they are supporting those who, they believe, aren’t working so hard. The harder it becomes to stretch their paychecks to buy groceries, the more they resent food stamps. This viewpoint was described more fully in Part IV of the series on American values.
The so-called liberal elites reject this line of thinking. One accomplished educator whom I was interviewing a few years ago summed it up thusly: “That’s stupid.” Learned man that he is, his utter disregard and disrespect was a low light of the usually uplifting field work for Our Common Purpose. More than any other experience it illustrated to me why we as a country are in such deep do-do.
In reality, contrasting points of view often represent important values we hold dearly. It’s just that they are destined to come in conflict with each other.
The abstract version of the conflict on this particular issue is in how we define fairness. Liberals tend to think of it as “fair and equal treatment.” Conservatives lean more to “fair rewards proportionate to effort.” Learn more about this in Part VI of the series on American values. Both of these interpretations have legitimacy but inevitably they come into conflict with each other. The question is how we balance them.
At a more concrete level, the conflict could be stated as fiscal discipline versus the belief that government should provide a safety net for those needing it. As an aside, it is hard to see how adding $3.4 trillion to the national debt serves fiscal discipline. Otherwise, similar to the preceding paragraph, these are both legitimate values that inevitably come into conflict with each other. The question again is how we balance them.
Our response to that these days isn’t anything to brag about, with partisan governance in full control. One side holds the bigger stick for a time. It will impose its will, summarily deciding the correct balance between this and that. Never mind the fallout. The “big, not so beautiful” legislation is causing even some Republican legislators to blanche, but these days they are no more than vassals of the President and they will find the votes. The other side can only resolve to put things back in order whenever it returns to power.
The better approach is methodically working through these differences, recognizing that none of us knows it all. There is something to be said for each point of view. If we’d study on it, we’d see that the conflicting values are each important. True to the ideals of polarity management, we’d list out the upsides and downsides of each. From there, we’d do our best to reconcile the two in a manner that, while the package will need to be re-balanced from time to time, can be maintained from one political regime to the next. Instead of oscillating wildly, we’d stabilize in the center.
You would call that good governance. It’s what we should be striving toward.
— Richard Gilman