I have a friend who’s uncle was, for many years, a very left-wing Labour MP in Britain. One of the people who would be insulted if you accused them of not being a Socialist. Very much not ‘New Labour’.
My friend. (Let’s call her M), remembers vividly a visit she paid to Parliament as a young women, and having tea with her Uncle in the Parliamentary tea –rooms. This is one of the parts of the Palace of Westminster where MPs and constituents mix closely together. During the meal, a notorious right-wing Tory MP came past their table – one of the really well-known bogeymen for the left. Her hackles rose in anticipations of hostility.
To her surprise the Tory stopped at their table and spoke with her uncle – and it was evident they had strong respect for each other and were in fact working constructively together on some problem. Then he left and her uncle looked at her quizicly.
"You don’t understand how I can even talk to him, do you?" he said.
"No I don’t!"
So he explained in something like these words.
In politics as in life you get the Shits and the Mensches. Every party without exception has its shits. They take up positions because that brings them attention. They are the rent-a quote people who turn up in the press regularly with an opinion on demand, party line snippets without thoughts. On the other hand you cannot trust them not to shift their positions unpredictably because they are in politics to ‘be’ something not to ‘do’ something.
But the mensches you can work with. That guy (naming the Tory) and I disagree on a huge number of things. But we do both recognise some things as being problems. We may not agree a lot on what to do about these problems, but we are both serious about the need to work on them. We tell each other honestly what we think. And if we find something we agree on, then often we can get things done, and trust each other to stick to our agreements when persuading others to get things done.
That story defines for me what real bi-partisanship means. It is not (just) the trading of compromises, or the softening-up of your own principles to fit into a triangular container. It is taking other people seriously, seriously enough to present your own ideas and experience and put them at risk from serious challenge and criticism. And using what you learn from taking these risks actually to do things that may improve matters, and last when you have moved on.
But the shits have weapons to make the mensches work more difficult.
There is a parallel to marriages and equivalent relationships that illustrates the opportunities and dangers. We have all seen it, even if we are fortunate enough to have escaped it – the relationship where one party is emotionally manipulative and the other is walking on eggshells trying to avoid explosions. The eggshell-walker is trying so hard to second and third guess what the manipulator will do or say that they forget to bring themselves and their own riches to the relationship. So you take two people and end up with something less than the sum of what they could be.
The people in politics who think that ‘bi-partisanship’ means simple horse-trading over votes are rather easily bullied into abandoning their positions for fear of eggshells. This is especially true when they are dealing with frightened Shits.
So an important question for those who want to encourage positive politics is how to spread understanding of real bi-partisanship, and how to encourage the Mensches amongst the various combinations of people who are broadly opposing what you believe in. Often the best people to find real bi-partisan ways forward are the people most confident in their own partisan experiences of life.
This story colours my understanding of this time. I look at Obama and hope he is actually the Mensch he appears to be. And I look at the efforts to deal with the eggshell-strewn legacies of Lieberman and wonder what is what.in the strange institutional imperfection that is the US Senate.