There are few community endeavors from which I derive more pleasure than my involvement with the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C.
Admittedly, Washington is part of a much broader community and Brookings, as the nation's oldest and most respected think tank, has never been associated with Las Vegas, although its significance to and involvement with our city will be made clear in time. Nevertheless, it is the quality of thinking that is the product of Brookings and the people with whom I am privileged to interact that make my work as a board member so rewarding.
One of the scholars to whom I refer is Dr. Pietro S. Nivola, who is the vice president and director of the Governance Studies Program at Brookings. He took part in a colloquium sponsored by the University of Pennsylvania recently that dealt with the civility, or lack thereof, in contemporary American politics. Among the participants was Sen. Joe Lieberman and House Minority Leader John Boehner, together with Tom Mann and Bill Galston of Brookings, who have done extensive research into the causes and consequences of partisan polarization.
When Pietro discussed this subject at our board meeting last week, I tried to take the kind of notes necessary to share his words with Sun readers who, like me, are very concerned about the lack of civility in politics and the effect it is having on good policy in this country.
So, with apologies to my friend Pietro if I got it wrong, here is my attempt to share with Sun readers his take on the subject in both his words and mine. Mostly his.
The word civility is derived from the Latin word civilitas. That word, in a Latin-English dictionary has two interpretations. One is the meaning with which we all are familiar, the notion of being polite. The other is broader and more ancient and refers to the science of politics.
So the question should be whether the United States has a "politeness" problem or a "science of politics" problem.
Although it would appear to most people that there is a problem with our political leadership and the public discourse in which it and others engage, the fact of the matter is that leaders and politicians have been impolite since the beginning of time in this country. You don't have to go too far back to understand the truth to that statement.
In the 1960s, when emotions were raw and tempers were short when it came to the Vietnam War, the language used and the feelings expressed were anything but genteel or polite. In fact, it was rare that a politician's position on the matter was ever expressed without some expletive being deleted. And what about the people in the streets? Civil is not a word I would use, would you?
And if you think the rhetoric used in today's political discussions is especially negative and nasty - and you could think that with good reason - Pietro suggests that you read or reread the rants that followers of John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson leveled at one another in the election of 1828. And, if you need some more history, go back to 1796 and pay attention to the insults hurled back and forth between the supporters of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. Pietro quotes former President Bill Clinton when he said, "They would blister the hairs off a dog's back."
The point is simple. People from the very beginning of our democracy have been, at best, impolite in expressing their concerns about the way this democracy is being run. So it is not the absence of civility that presents the problem. Rather, it is the decline in the "science of politics."
That science is the art of managing conflict, reconciling or bridging major differences and reaching pragmatic compromises where it matters. And here is where we have a serious problem.
Brookings collaborated with the Hoover Institution at Stanford on a project titled "Red and Blue Nation," which has shed some light on what the partisan divide in this country has and has not done to our politics.
Here are some of the highlights:
Voters are not turned off by the shouting. The rhetoric has tended to increase voter interest in elections and, therefore, political engagement and turnout.
The partisanship has not caused total legislative gridlock. Despite the great differences between left and right, and for good or bad, major pieces of legislation have been passed. Medicare drug benefits, No Child Left Behind, McCain-Feingold, Sarbanes-Oxley, NAFTA, the 1994 crime bill and welfare reform are just a few legislative highlights passed during a time of increasing partisan rancor.
But there are three areas where this hyper-partisanship in Congress and the White House can pose a real threat to our democracy.
The first is in the long-term independence and health of the judicial branch of government. The selection and confirmation of federal judges has become an inordinately acrimonious ordeal.
Second, politicians need some semblance of bipartisan cover to tackle and solve long-range fiscal challenges of the welfare state. That is, the unsustainable costs of entitlement spending, the "third rails" of Social Security reform, Medicare and health insurance reform are simply too hot to touch except on a bipartisan basis.
And, most importantly, the conduct of meaningful foreign policy becomes almost impossible when partisan politics no longer stops at the water's edge. We need only to look at the Iraq debate as an example of how the lack of civility can cloud any meaningful resolution to a serious foreign policy problem.
So, now you know the highlights of what I learned from people who study this stuff for a living. The important thing is that there are no surprises in anything Pietro talked about. At least there shouldn't be.
The surprise to me, at least, is that Americans are still content - no happy - to carry on as if there is nothing wrong, nothing broken, nothing in our civil system that needs to be repaired.
There is a Latin word for that , too. And only politeness keeps me from using it.
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