The Art of the Compromise: Returning American Democracy to Better Days

Our American democracy is not broken. Our two-party political system and constitutional government are working, though perhaps not at their best. In recent years, we have experienced the storming of the Capitol, the rise of demagogues (such as Donald Trump and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez), and the polarization into Red and Blue States. Unfortunately, we seem to be at a low point, a possible breaking point.

However, we should not fear this moment.

We should embrace it and learn from it. We have been here before as a nation. Shays’s Rebellion. The Civil War. The turbulent Sixties. Each moment was perilous, yet we survived each one and became stronger. Our Founders designed our Constitution to bend and not break. The turmoil we see today in America is not new. Yet, we have lost something. We have forgotten the art form of compromise. Like Trump, we have lost our way, and we see government as a business where the Art of the Deal reigns supreme and compromise has become a four-letter word, shunned from public discourse.

We must learn again to compromise.

Compromise does not have to mean milquetoast, meet-in-the-middle solutions that satisfy no one, but rather it can mean integratively complex solutions that revolutionize government. After all our Constitution, the foundation of the American government, has been described as “a bundle of compromises.” Such solutions satisfy the differentiated positions of the left and the right in a “bisociated compromise,” a term defined and explored in this book. To return to better days as a nation, we must recognize that government is not a business, and thus, we must reject the Art—and Tyranny—of the Deal and reclaim the Art of the Compromise.