Don't Want Gridlock? Stop Voting for It

In public opinion polls, voters claim to prefer politicians who are willing to compromise when in power. Yet, election results tell a different story.

As I have written previously (some will say “ad nauseam”), the politics of harsh rhetoric, ideological polarization and legislative gridlock are the dominant realities in Washington, DC and many state capitols today. The situation is bad, and it is getting worse.

In my view, there are many factors that have contributed to the current sorry state of affairs, including:

• The atomization of American society generally;
• An increasingly fractured and cacophonous news media;
• Web-transmitted fabrications and other nonsense that passes for news;
• Political hired guns who do not give a damn about governing or the consequences of their tactics on our civic institutions;
• Legislative redistricting practices that put more power at the extremes rather than in the middle.

But there is another force at work, as well, one which is at least as fundamental as those listed above: Citizens sometimes appear to vote as if their beliefs and their political behavior are totally unrelated to one another.

The recent midterm elections revealed at least two examples of this disconnect.

Almost every poll I saw leading up to November 2 showed that the public has a decidedly negative view of both major political parties, with the Republicans generally scoring even worse than the Democrats. Yet, on Election Day, the people voted overwhelmingly for the Republicans. Go figure.

And if that weren’t enough, there was another puzzling dynamic at work, as well.

Via the results of a public opinion survey conducted in the spring by the Pew Research Center, we learned that voters said they were more inclined than not to support candidates who will work to get things done, and who will compromise with opponents in the process. Democrats are decidedly more flexible than Republicans in this regard, but even the GOP counts among its ranks many who understand that governing a representative democracy requires real give and take.

The Pew study showed that:

• Among all voters, 42% were more likely to vote for a candidate “who will compromise with people they disagree with”, while only 22% were less likely. 29% said it would make no difference.
• Among Democrats the comparable numbers were 49%, 19% and 26%, whereas Republicans weighed in at 35%, 40% and 21% respectively.

Another survey, this one isolated to a single geographic area, underscored the public’s devotion to pragmatism. In an October poll conducted by the Survey and Policy Research Institute (SPRI) at San Jose State University, voters were asked:

When deciding between candidates for public office, generally speaking, would you favor a candidate who takes firm positions on issues and promises not to compromise on those issues, or would you favor a candidate who takes positions on issues but who also promises to work with people on the opposing side in an effort to reach compromise solutions?

The results were telling:

• 18.7 % prefer candidate with firm positions
• 65.4 % prefer candidate willing to compromise
• 12.3 % said they don’t know or it makes no difference

And as was the case in Pew’s national sample, the SPRI survey found that Silicon Valley Democrats are more pragmatic than the opposition, yet Republicans also favor, by a margin of 59% to 34%, candidates who are “willing to compromise”.

Yet the recent election results tell a different story. Most of the victorious GOP candidates come across as real hardliners. The vehemence of the Tea Party crowd infused the conservative movement with considerable energy during the campaign, but just as clearly that energy was not predicated on a devotion to political compromise or accommodation.

As a consequence, the philosophical intensity and rigidity currently evident on the right has to be taken seriously. But while it may be intoxicating to Republicans for a while, both research and experience tell us that long-term popularity and electoral strength will accrue to the party that puts results ahead of rhetoric, and progress ahead of purity. No less a conservative icon than Ronald Reagan demonstrated that principle time and again.