Can we at least agree on what compromise is?

Why can’t they just reach a compromise?

Seems like a reasonable enough request. There’s only one problem. Many people don’t appear to understand what a compromise is.

Example: A high school girl has a crush on a classmate and offers her parents a proposal. If you don’t let me stay out till midnight with this boy I like, I won’t eat my dinner or do my homework.

Compromise isn’t, okay, if you eat your dinner and do your homework, you can stay out till midnight.”

The compromise is, we all know you have to eat. We also know you have to do your homework. These are not bargaining chips.

The real question, is how late the girl can stay out. The answer might be, because you really like this boy, and we know him and his family, and he seems polite, and we trust you, we’ll let you stay out an hour longer than usual.

Or, it could be something else. The thing with compromises is you never know what they’ll be; and you shouldn’t. If you do, they aren’t compromises.

Compromises aren’t accepting something bad to get something good. That’s hostage negotiating.

Take the immigration problem.

Most people, including members of Congress are on the side of dreamers in the DACA debate. At least they say they are.

Everyone agrees that we need more judges and agents handling immigration cases.

Everyone agrees that separating families and putting kids in cages make us look barbaric.

Everyone agrees government workers have nothing to do with border crossings.

These are not bargaining chips. Nor should they be. These issues can be dealt with easily and quickly. Then we can move unto solving the real problems, whose solutions not everyone agrees on.

Like an immigration problem that entails more than our southern border, or a very real drug dependency problem in this country that is much more complicated than stopping drugs from coming across the Rio Grande.

Almost everyone agrees that these problems are more complicated than the way the president presents them. Most people realize we don’t live in his gold-plated, black-and-white world.

Compromise is working on those areas where two sides don’t agree, but are willing to listen.

Yes, it involves giving in to some extent, but the giving in is in the area of contention. Most importantly, the discussions must revolve around indisputable facts.

On July 24, 2016, I wrote a piece, “The colors of compromise” that appeared in the Forum. It offered the idea that mixing colors is not something magical or mysterious, but rather something based on hard, cold physics. A tremendous range of colors (look at any Glidden paint display) can be derived from mixing just a few basic colors (red, yellow and blue). But, you can’t just throw them together.

It is a slow, deliberate process.

Compromise in Congress or between nations is rarely accomplished at the highest levels. Two sides can’t come to the table with demands and expect success. What they can expect are stand-offs like the one we currently have.

The way around this roadblock is for Congress to pass the laws it knows it can pass and get those issues off the table.

Then, people who aren’t the president or the Speaker of the House or the Majority Leader of the Senate can start talking. They can debate real facts, not hyperbole, and look for real solutions, not game winners. The compromise will be a position that makes the most of the best of both sides and uses the least of the worse of both sides.

I lean more in favor of Speaker Pelosi than Leader McConnell, but I understand that as veterans of Congress, both have a better idea of how compromises are arrived at. They both know they are dealing with a president who has gotten his own way his whole life.

These two leaders must first stand up for Congress and explain to the president how government works. Then they must assign their members to begin work in an orderly manner, paying attention to detail.

Sadly, this is what Congress did during the Bush administration and made considerable progress until outside forces scuttled the process. I believe smart high school students given the facts could do this again, if they truly wanted to.

These students would understand that compromise is more than just, I’ll give you this if you give me that. It depends on what this and that are, and do they relate to the problem at hand.