Candidates on the campaign trail
routinely make this bold proclamation: “I will never compromise!”
Have they ever heard about The Great
Compromise of the Constitutional Convention of 1787? The Missouri Compromise?
The FDR/Robert Doughton compromise to pass Social Security in 1935 in return
for the Blue Ridge Parkway coming through North Carolina?
The whole concept of America as a
self-governing constitutional democratic republic rests entirely on the intelligent
practice of compromise. To assert otherwise shows a complete misunderstanding
of American history.
What does “never compromising”
mean exactly? Do they really mean never compromising their “values”? Or their “principles”?
Or their “political goals”?
Politicians have a very hard time
understanding the difference between all three. As a consequence, they usually collapse
all three into one pot and then fail to accomplish anything major because they
can’t separate their values from their principles and political goals.
Bernie Sanders may be the most
“principled” of all politicians. Even though everything he says is wrong and
won’t work, his values line up with his principles and political goals and he
is consistent at least.
By contrast, take every
conservative candidate for Congress for the past 20 years. They promise, in
order, to: 1) Cut Your Taxes! (check); 2) Strengthen the Military! (check); 3)
Protect Your Gun Rights! (check) and 4) Balance the Budget! (oops)”
Then they sign the ‘No Tax Hike”
pledge; the ‘Balanced Budget Pledge” and the ‘Keep Social Security and Medicare
Safe!’ pledge.
Immediately, they violate their
values, principles and their political goal promises. It is impossible to cut
taxes, leave entitlements alone and balance the federal budget to name one
glaring example of such hypocrisy.
It comes across as lying to the
American public. No surprise there.
Lying has never been a virtue in
any walk of life. It is a disqualification trait for anyone who purports to run
as a candidate of values from any scope of ethics, morals, religious belief or
philosophical outlook on life.
Core values are fundamental
beliefs that form a person’s outlook on life and daily behavior. Universally
accepted norms of honesty, fairness, justice usually make up the bedrock
infrastructure of a person’s identity.
“Principles” are the tactics by
which a person executes their personal values. Not passing along mountains of
debt to our children and grandchildren is one example where a principle is different
from values.
A political “goal” is very different
from a personal “value” or “principle”. A political goal can be balancing the
budget; cutting taxes, strengthening the military, protecting Second Amendment
rights or opposing infanticide. Making legislative compromises to achieve your
stated policy objectives does not have to violate your underlying values of
honesty unless you confuse political goals with values and principles.
If a core value is “honesty”,
don’t sign competing pledges. If a core principle is to “do the right thing”,
don’t keep voting to spend more money while blaming everyone else for the $22
trillion national debt.
Compromising on taxes to balance
the budget does not violate personal principles or values if a representative’s
number one political goal is “balancing the budget”. If their number one
political goal is to cut taxes under any circumstance, then any concern they
have about balancing the budget leaves only one choice to maintain their stated
value of honesty: reduce the rate of growth in federal spending, especially in
Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid since mandatory entitlement programs make
up 61% of the budget today.
If an elected official doesn’t
know how to count to 218 in the House and 51 in the Senate in order to get a
compromise passed, then we as a nation have a much greater problem than them
trying to understand the difference between values, principles and political
goals.
One other core value humans have
always admired is “courage”. Wouldn’t it
be nice to see some in Washington today?
(first published in North State Journal 5/22/19)
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