Founding Fathers Balanced Interests, So Should We

(Continued from home page)

maintain the balance of power and policy we have fostered over the years.   Fortunately, some inner sense lets us know when the government – and we with it – have tilted too far.  Maybe that’s brought on by guilt, maybe fear, maybe fairness, maybe just plain common sense.  Good as far as it goes, except this calibration would be so much better if it were a conscious one.

For a long time, Congress was the keeper of this responsibility, working across the aisle to advance the common good.  We are reminded of the powerful potential, and no doubt Congress reminded itself, when both parties came together to pass the affordable housing bill – only for it to be held hostage by the President.

As a general practice, whatever inclination toward cooperation is cast aside.  We have grown accustomed to watching our elected representatives stretch the congressional rulebook one way or the other to advance their respective partisan visions.  While we are responsible for electing these people, they quickly become vassals of the two major political parties and the special interests they represent.

Their overall agenda couldn’t be any more different than balance, in fact it’s just the opposite.  By trying to sway matters far to one side or the other, they are doing everything in their power to knock us off balance.  New pressures ranging from MAGA to the Democratic Socialists serve only to exacerbate the differences.

Rather than slip-sliding back and forth with each new administration, we need to make balance a fundamental philosophy.  Balance should be the message and the objective, the method we use and the outcome we seek.

We accomplish this by incorporating the best of both sides on any particular question into something better.  This isn’t 50-50.  It’s whatever combination is best suited to the need and the circumstances.

There is a large constituency for this kind of approach.  The most recent of a six-year series of nationwide public opinion surveys conducted for my initiative, Our Common Purpose, show the balanced approach gains at minimum a plurality of support on every policy question asked.  On half of those questions, it got more support than the two partisan positions put together.

Moderates would be most logical to line up behind this approach, and many do.  Importantly, they are joined in nearly equal numbers by those conservatives and/or liberals who are something less than the most zealous.  By contrast, the more ardent partisans – those who consider themselves very conservative or very liberal – are predictably less enthused about something that doesn’t tilt entirely in their direction.

As detailed previously by Our Common Purpose, we need to start this process by acknowledging a long list of values we hold dear, headed by familiar ideals such as liberty and justice that go all the way back to the founding.  Uplifting sentiments aside, these values inevitably come into conflict with each other at the core of many of our major policy disputes.  As just one pertinent example, the back-and-forth over border security boils down to a contest between compassion and law-and-order, two ideals that are in frequent conflict.  Democrats and Republicans reflexively take up predictable positions, arguing passionately about which value is the problem and which is the solution.

We err badly by turning a blind eye to the obvious.  There are positives that come from both values in question.  When considered in isolation, both are valued for many reasons.  Yet we’re put in a position of picking one to the exclusion of the other.  Then, when things get out of hand, we reverse course four years later.

How much better it would be if from the get-go, in this and every debate, there was a third side seeking the right balance of the two.  What for instance is the best balance of compassion and law-and-order, and how do we combine them to best effect?   We should be aiming to creatively build upon the best qualities of both to produce solutions that diverse perspectives can live with and support.  This is the only path to the stability that so many desire.

For the sake of the nation, the Founding Fathers ingeniously found balance that has lasted 250 years.  We should be working harder to do the same.