Obviously there's been a lot of frustration with the President's determination to reaching across the aisle, no matter how many times Lucy pulls the football away. As he pledged to "change the tone" in Washington during the campaign, he's hellbent on hewing to that pledge, still fighting for the ideal of bipartisanship and cooperation, even when reality says he needs to do otherwise.
Problem is, that ideal never existed. The tone in Washington has always been thus, and the compromises this country was built on were mostly bad ones. Read on...
As far as I can tell, most of the compromises in American history fall into one of two categories: ones that leave both sides unhappy and need to be revisited later, and ones that leave both sides unhappy but can't be revisited later.
The classic example of the second is the "Small State Compromise" aka the Connecticut Compromise, or Great Compromise of 1787. It's responsible for our bicameral legislature (not, in itself, a terrible idea), and the makeup of the Senate, the most undemocratic body in our government.
As originally conceived, no one would vote directly for the Senate; Senators would be voted in by the state legislatures. And, of course, each state has two Senators, regardless of size. As a result, 37 million Californians (2000 Census numbers used) are represented by two Senators, and 35 million Americans in the 21 least populous states are represented by 42 Senators. So, as far as the Senate is concerned, if you live in Wyoming, your vote counts for 68 times what it would be if you lived in California.
Now, was this compromise necessary to get all 13 colonies on board? Almost certainly. But that doesn't make it a good idea.
The second kind of compromise is one that makes neither side happy and just kicks the can down the road. Don't Ask Don't Tell is a perfect example. Clinton didn't feel like he had the support to outright lift the ban on gays in the military, so he punted the issue. Fortunately, we live in more enlightened times, and now the ban is lifted. But DADT wasn't a solution, it was a step towards a solution.
Now, Obama has said exactly that - that if we passed a half-measure on health care, we could add the public option later. If we cave on tax cuts now, we can revisit it in two years, and then, maybe we'll put up a fight, but honestly, we'll probably cave then too.
The difference is, Clinton knew that America's attitude towards gays and lesbians was changing, and by the time the issue was revisited, it'd be an easier sell. Is that the case for Obama? Are the Republicans suddenly going to forget they were put on this earth to help lobbyists and billionaires? If they're not giving an inch now, they're not going to give an inch when they're running the House.
Which brings me to our third compromise: The Missouri Compromise. This was a compromise, in 1820, on the subject of slavery. The free states didn't want to admit another slave state to the Union; the slave states wanted to be able to own other human beings anywhere and everywhere. The compromise said if part of any state was south of 36º30', it could allow slavery. The reason Missouri has a notch in the southeast corner, is so it can cross that line.
Now, this compromise was unacceptable to abolitionists, and obviously it was unacceptable to anyone who had to live under slavery in the new states. But it was unacceptable to the South as well. Why? Abraham Lincoln said it better that I ever could:
Will they be satisfied if the Territories be unconditionally surrendered to them? We know they will not. In all their present complaints against us, the Territories are scarcely mentioned. Invasions and insurrections are the rage now. Will it satisfy them, if, in the future, we have nothing to do with invasions and insurrections? We know it will not. We so know, because we know we never had anything to do with invasions and insurrections; and yet this total abstaining does not exempt us from the charge and the denunciation.
The question recurs, what will satisfy them? Simply this: We must not only let them alone, but we must somehow, convince them that we do let them alone. This, we know by experience, is no easy task. We have been so trying to convince them from the very beginning of our organization, but with no success. In all our platforms and speeches we have constantly protested our purpose to let them alone; but this has had no tendency to convince them. Alike unavailing to convince them, is the fact that they have never detected a man of us in any attempt to disturb them.
These natural, and apparently adequate means all failing, what will convince them? This, and this only: cease to call slavery wrong, and join them in calling it right. And this must be done thoroughly - done in acts as well as in words. Silence will not be tolerated - we must place ourselves avowedly with them. Senator Douglas' new sedition law must be enacted and enforced, suppressing all declarations that slavery is wrong, whether made in politics, in presses, in pulpits, or in private. We must arrest and return their fugitive slaves with greedy pleasure. We must pull down our Free State constitutions. The whole atmosphere must be disinfected from all taint of opposition to slavery, before they will cease to believe that all their troubles proceed from us.
I am quite aware they do not state their case precisely in this way. Most of them would probably say to us, "Let us alone, do nothing to us, and say what you please about slavery." But we do let them alone - have never disturbed them - so that, after all, it is what we say, which dissatisfies them. They will continue to accuse us of doing, until we cease saying.
I encourage you to read the whole speech; it may be the most important in American history, moreso even than Gettysburg. It launched Lincoln to the presidency, and became the cornerstone of the country's argument to eliminate slavery. What's striking is how, taking slavery out of the equation, how relevant these paragraphs seem today. Taxes are at their lowest point in generations, but the Teabaggers hate Obama because taxes are so high. Obama, and Clinton before him, made sweeping tax cuts, and the GOP attacks them nonstop for raising taxes. Remember "Obama's going to take your guns away" mania? It doesn't matter how much the Democrats "reach out" to the Republicans - the GOP will just attack all the louder.
As for compromise, this is what Lincoln had to say on the subject, from the same speech:
If slavery is right, all words, acts, laws, and constitutions against it, are themselves wrong, and should be silenced, and swept away. If it is right, we cannot justly object to its nationality - its universality; if it is wrong, they cannot justly insist upon its extension - its enlargement. All they ask, we could readily grant, if we thought slavery right; all we ask, they could as readily grant, if they thought it wrong. Their thinking it right, and our thinking it wrong, is the precise fact upon which depends the whole controversy. Thinking it right, as they do, they are not to blame for desiring its full recognition, as being right; but, thinking it wrong, as we do, can we yield to them? Can we cast our votes with their view, and against our own? In view of our moral, social, and political responsibilities, can we do this?
Wrong as we think slavery is, we can yet afford to let it alone where it is, because that much is due to the necessity arising from its actual presence in the nation; but can we, while our votes will prevent it, allow it to spread into the National Territories, and to overrun us here in these Free States? If our sense of duty forbids this, then let us stand by our duty, fearlessly and effectively. Let us be diverted by none of those sophistical contrivances wherewith we are so industriously plied and belabored - contrivances such as groping for some middle ground between the right and the wrong, vain as the search for a man who should be neither a living man nor a dead man - such as a policy of "don't care" on a question about which all true men do care.
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Neither let us be slandered from our duty by false accusations against us, nor frightened from it by menaces of destruction to the Government nor of dungeons to ourselves. LET US HAVE FAITH THAT RIGHT MAKES MIGHT, AND IN THAT FAITH, LET US, TO THE END, DARE TO DO OUR DUTY AS WE UNDERSTAND IT.
Let me repeat:
thinking it wrong, as we do, can we yield to them? Can we cast our votes with their view, and against our own? In view of our moral, social, and political responsibilities, can we do this?
Compromise means backing down from ideas you know to be right, and accepting ideas you know to be wrong. Furthermore, it doesn't work. As you should all know, the Missouri compromise didn't work; slavery expanded, yet as Lincoln predicted, the slaveowners were not placated, tensions continued to escalate, and eventually the question had to be settled in a method for which there could be no compromise - war.
Should we go to war literally over our modern-day problems? Of course not. Should we, figuratively? Hell yes.
P.S. - Completely unrelated issue, but I had to look up the list of states by population for the Senate stat and noticed something. Puerto Rico has more people than Oregon, Connecticut, or 22 other states. Why the hell isn't it a state? Speaking of undemocratic...