Not
about hate crimes or gun violence or terrorists.
It’s
gotten me to thinking about colors and how they combine to form new colors.
You could
call it a miracle except that it’s not. It’s simple physics.
Just the
mention of physics drives a lot of people away. I suppose the mention of
miracles does the same thing. It would be nice if there was a term somewhere
between miracle and physics to describe the process of red and yellow coming
together to form an exciting new color—orange.
For lack of
a better word, let’s call it a compromise.
Red and
yellow bring something to the table and a new color walks away from the table.
There is still plenty of red to go around and all
the yellow we will ever need, but now there is also a new color in town, orange.
Of course, red
and yellow don’t actually make a compromise. Neither do they bring attitude or
biases to the process. Neither is afraid or suspicious of the other. They don’t
question the need for a new color. That is why combining red and yellow to form
orange is no big deal.
As you might
expect, this essay isn’t about colors so much as it is about compromise, but
the science of mixing colors can offer some insight into the difficulty of
finding compromise—specifically compromise in Congress.
Red and blue
combining to create purple is a relatively easy task. So is bringing blue and
yellow together to produce green. Creating maroon or fuchsia or crimson or any
of the thousands of other possible potential colors is a little harder to
accomplish—but not impossible.
Physics tell
us so. Creating new colors is no different than sending a man to the moon. You
simply set goals, start at the beginning, build on what you have and keep
moving forward. You can’t tackle the big problems until you tackle the little
ones.
Reaching compromise in Congress relies on the
same principles. It has nothing to do with physics but when it happens, it is
often referred to as a miracle. It’s really no more than common sense.
We’ve seen
how the Congress can work together—Democrats and Republicans, working together
to name a new post office, or something else of little significance. But the
hard decisions, the truly important decisions, seem impossible. It wasn’t
always this way.
In 1964,
liberals from the liberal Republican Party, whose presidential candidate was
right-wing conservative Barry Goldwater, joined forces with liberals from a
predominantly conservative Democratic Party, led by Lyndon Johnson, a FDR New
Deal liberal president to pass the Civil Rights Act. This monumental piece of
legislation was enacted in spite of and because of split votes within the
parties.
The key was
having liberal and conservative wings within each party to essentially break
down barriers at a level where they could be broken down. As barriers fell,
areas of agreement arose. By the time the Civil Rights bill reached the halls
of Congress, the heavy lifting had been done. To be sure, not everyone was
happy. They never are. But something did get done.
It took
about two months for this legislation to pass. Today’s Congress has passed
little significant legislation in the past eight years. It cannot even initiate
hearing to confirm a Supreme Court judge.
The fifties
and sixties was a time of great advancements made possible by common sense
compromise. The interstate highway system, landing a man on the moon, moving
from a prewar depression and a wartime military buildup to a consumer based
economy were all accomplished by two political parties working together. Whatever
divisions that existed, existed in both parties and it was within those parties
that the initial work was done.
The problem
today is that there is a huge split between the parties and almost no split
within the parties. The result is that compromise winds up be sought at the
highest levels of government where failure is almost certainly guaranteed.
Anticipating compromise on the floor
of Congress today is like bringing red and blue together and expecting to get
fuchsia out of the deal. It’s simply too big a project hindered by too little ground
work within the parties. There has to be room within the Democratic Party for
conservatives and within the Republican Party for liberals—not to mention a few
other voices. Then there has to be debate within those parties. It also
wouldn’t hurt if liberal and conservative weren’t seen as derogatory terms and
compromise seen as surrender.
Maybe our leaders should lay aside
the Constitution—for just a moment—and brush up on their physics.
