I have a healthy respect for Gergen. Good read. http://www.cnn.com/2012/04/27/opinion/gergen-polarized-politics/index.html?hpt=hp_c3 A small snippet: Under heavy pressures for party conformity, legislation by nature becomes a more partisan undertaking. Hard to believe it now, but big programs like Medicare and Medicaid in the 1960s, or tax and Social Security reform in the 1980s, passed with broad bipartisan support. Our latest legislative achievements, on the other hand (think health care, the stimulus or Wall Street reform), have been almost entirely driven by one party. More often than not, gridlock and obstruction soon follow. As scholar Bill Galston has wisely noted, it becomes "a zero-sum mentality: if they win, we lose." As Galston and others have theorized, all this sniping saps the public's trust in the government, but it does something equally insidious, too: It saps trust between the parties, completing the vicious cycle and making compromise even tougher.
I think the hardest part is knowing when to say "yes, my party should concede so that both parties compromise."
And that's part of the problem. The idea that good compromise involves "conceding". To me, that's wrong thinking. It's about recognizing a problem and then working together to solve it.
Politicians need to think more about what the people of the state they represent want and need and less about what their national political party wants.
Democrat: "take this razor and cut your throat" Republican: "that's a horrible idea." Democrat: "c'mon, compromise. you only have to cut your throat a little."
