BY ROBERT H. MICHEL
Reprinted from The Hill
House Speaker Sam Rayburn was fond of saying that anyone can burn down a barn, but not everyone can build one. There will certainly be some barn burning in the new Congress.
But even repealing the new healthcare law, for example, will require a controlled burn, preserving those elements worth keeping and building something new in its place.
Divided government means building alliances and mobilizing the bipartisanship essential to getting bills signed into law. Cutting spending and taxes still requires passing legislation. It will require, first, a wrenching change in the behavior that dominated the campaigns.
Campaigns reduce issues to their simplest form. Governing unravels their complexities. Campaigns define issues; governing resolves them. Campaign behavior is instinctively combative and partisan. The process of governing might start out that way, but resolution of difficult and complex problems eventually requires consensus and, yes, compromise.
The distinctions between campaigning and governing have disappeared over the years. Campaigning no longer stops on election day; it is merely moved to Washington where the bitterness and the refusal to budge on issues has become the norm.
Republican and Democratic leaders have quit meeting regularly, as I did with Speaker Tom Foley and Speaker Tip O’Neill in the 1980s, and some have simply quit talking at all. Republicans and Democrats discontinued bipartisan retreats, where members and their families got to know each other as something other than political adversaries.
The right of the members to legislate has been badly abused by both parties. Partisan obstinacy has created such gridlock it is no wonder the public is disgusted.
The environment of incivility and intolerance is not entirely the fault of politicians. The media share much blame. Civil discourse might not be possible unless the media are overridden.
We have let incivility permeate our society and our politics in America , and I do not know why people are drawn to it at the same time they criticize and condemn it. But they do, and they must decide.
It is up to the public to insist that their political leaders restore civility as the required standard of political behavior.
There are steps our leaders can take. Among them:
• adopt tougher House rules governing political behavior;
• meet regularly with the opposition;
• revive bipartisan retreats and conferences;
• strengthen member rights;
• increase transparency and open deliberations;
• strengthen the role of the committees;
•educate and instruct congressional staff;
•combat media that exploit the political process; and
• set a good example. Behave in a manner that gives the public a reason to respect their government institutions and the people who serve in them. Most importantly, listen.
I applaud those who want to restore the spirit of Ronald Reagan, but some do it with apparently little knowledge or poor recollections of the Reagan era. Ronald Reagan’s agenda made it through a Democratic Congress in a civil environment in which government gridlock was not an acceptable outcome. Those who praise him should at least behave like him, adhering to the values of human decency, personal character and the civility of governance that drove him and inspired others.
In the Declaration on Civility embraced in 2005 by a long list of great public servants and in a letter signed by 130 former members just this year, we were reminded that civility does not require citizens to give up cherished beliefs.
It is true. Compromise is not a dirty word and civility is not a sign of weakness. Simple civility is the cornerstone of governance. The country will get nowhere without it.
Those politicians who are the new beneficiaries of the public trust will discover governing is not a constant battle between right and wrong, but choosing between options that have both merits and detractions. Making choices and winning the day with them in a highly diverse Congress of Americans from different walks of life, different motivations, different constituencies and different agendas will take skillful craftsmen who have the tools needed to build barns rather than burn them. The choices and that great challenge await them.
Rep. Michel ( Ill. ) is the former Republican Leader of the House of Representatives, who served in Congress from 1957 to 1994.