Category: Transpartisan Notes

To ONLY be used with the Standard Weekly Transpartisan Notes. This category sorts Transpartisan Notes into their own section.

Is the Republican Party a Lost Cause?

“And if so, should it be?”

Transpartisan Note #141

by A. Lawrence Chickering and James S. Turner

In the wake of the riots on January 6, the Republican Party has been falling apart in front of us. In a July 14, 2020 op-ed on The Bulwark, our friend Bill Kristol, a well-known, never-Trump Republican, asked the same question with the same subtitle.

From our transpartisan perspective we answer both yes and no. We also believe that equal challenges face the Democratic Party, even though they are less obvious for Democrats at the present time. Two-thirds to three-quarters of the constitutionally-eligible, American electorate does not formally identify with either the Republican or Democratic Party. We think we are witnessing the death throes of the political duopoly, in which a small fraction of the electorate controls 100% of formal power.

Could we be experiencing the birth pangs of new American political institutions? Institutions which will integrate ‘freedom’ and ‘order’ rather than set them against each other as two warring philosophies?

Kristol is ambivalent about whether the GOP can be saved, highlighting the issue of whether it can sever its relationship with Trump. As long as it is Trump’s party, Kristol suggests, “it deserves to be a lost cause.” It needs to find a way to stop being the party of Trumpism. But even if it can, it still must deal with the ‘political and moral stain’ of its past, tied to Trump.

He starts outlining a way to create ‘a conservative party that [isn’t] a nativist, proto-authoritarian, nationalist-populist party’; a conservative party with ‘a new center’. If it is to be saved, he notes finally, it will need leadership from people who were Trumpist fellow-travelers, not from the never-Trumpers, whom Trumpists will not forgive for being right about Trump.

Kristol says his heart is with the ‘lost cause’ faction. He concludes, elegantly, with quotes from T.S. Eliot and Pascal, who touch on the final question: ‘The heart has its reasons which reason knows nothing of.’ ‘Heart or mind? Lost cause or worth trying to save?’ In his final sentence, Kristol says he doesn’t know.

The issue tormenting both Kristol and (we would say) conservatism is not of recent origin. It has been lurking beneath the surface of both conservative and liberal thought since at least the 1950s and, we think, much longer than that. In fact, the Whigs replaced the Federalists in the 1820s, and the Republicans replaced the Whigs in the 1850s over the same issues.

The issue we refer to is conflict between individual freedom and the need for a concept of the higher good. This issue is important for both the Left and the Right, but neither has solved it. We refer the concepts ‘freedom’ and ‘higher good’ with the words ‘Freedom’ and ‘Order’, which are the two essential concepts in political history the integration of which is essential to a transpartisan politics.

Freedom is a troublesome concept because it has both positive and negative meanings. Although both are important, conservatives focus on the negative meaning, especially in focusing on freedom from government. They tend to avoid the positive meaning, which, unfortunately, is essential to reveal a higher good.

Unless conservatives can articulate how freedom can lead (positively) to order (some positive good), conservatism will appear incoherent, if not actually malevolent. Political candidates who focus entirely on freedom from government, without showing how freedom is essential for many positive goods, will spark accusations from left-liberal opponents that they are the Party of Greed.

‘Freedom’ without ‘order’ leads to nihilism or greed, and ‘order’ without ‘freedom’ means despotism.

 

Introducing a Strong Concept of Citizenship

We believe that the best issue to show freedom and order working in harmony is where citizens are given strong, positive roles in actively supporting public-private partnerships in education, health care, law enforcement, and other areas. Both political parties today acquiesce to a ‘weak concept of citizenship’, wherein citizens passively receive government services but with no active role to play themselves.

The emphasis on governments as the only significant actors is analogous to the general dependence on experts to solve problems, with little space given to citizens. It is true in education (notwithstanding the widespread understanding of the importance of children’s motivation to learn) and also in health care which, in public programs, is all about doctors and hospitals, with only minor attention given to patients’ self-care.

Civil society programs on different issues provide opportunities to show how citizens, as co-owners, can play crucial, active roles, working with governments. Political leaders who understand theatrical opportunities to showcase citizen problem-solvers, can offer important strategic and tactical guidance. These opportunities can come in the form of visiting successful programs, focusing on their positive impacts, and highlighting the important roles citizens play in them.

Integrating freedom with order is the great unfolding challenge which both Right and Left ‘solve’ by avoiding. The Right does avoid it by appeals to traditional religion or (in secular terms) civic virtue. The Left, after Rousseau, avoids it by looking to the Noble Savage for redemption.

Implicit in both the modern Right and modern Left is the belief that leaving the Garden was either for the Right a sin (The Original Sin) or, somehow, for the Left a mistake. Both avoid the challenge of freedom with strategies that focus on going nostalgically back to some imagined, greater past in which memory of all problems and troubles disappear. Both struggle with vision looking forward, intent on discovering Order through Freedom.

The Right tends to address the issue by seeking to impose order by demanding better and stronger values either by public or private institutions, while the Left tends to address the issue by imposing order through government decree. Transpartisan politics offers a home for the two-thirds or more of the population that seeks to empower people to self-improvement and cooperation by embracing them as co-owners, freeing them from having only the Right/Left burn-down-the-house death struggle of current daily politics. We especially find this impulse in public spaces, such as schools, health care, law enforcement, and other community grounded undertakings.

President Biden’s Inaugural Address explicitly expressed this need. Time will tell if actions are able to meet or surpass rhetoric. In the meantime, Republicans regroup.

(Image from WikiMedia. Additional text and editing by Andy Fluke.)

In This Together 2021

Mobilizing “Solutions Voters” in a bid to save American democracy.

Transpartisan Note #140

shared by A. Lawrence Chickering and James S. Turner

Last summer, we featured an article by TTR friend and advisor Bill Shireman that put forth a strategy on Beating the Politics of Polarization involving a transpartisan theory that would have renegade political strategists mobilize “Solutions Voters” in a bid to save American democracy. In a follow-up commentary, we shared the story of In This Together, Bill’s transpartisan initiative that grew from an event where a dozen billionaire political donors (from all sides of our Matrix)  gathered by video with business leaders, foundation chiefs, scientists, advocates, and political strategists.

Bill Shireman, and his innovation partner, Dallas real estate scion Trammell S. Crow, were at the heart of this initiative from the start. Aiming to make considerable impact during the 2024 election season, the two continue to share this bold plan on their quest to save American democracy.

Bill and Trammell recently joined Stuart Scott and Dale Walkonen on FacingFuture.TV to talk about their initiative, their book of the same name, and how the ever-widening political divide has prevented us from coming together on the things most important to all of us. You can watch their conversation here.

We would also like to share an episode, featuring Bill, of the Fractal Friends podcast from earlier in January where, along with discussing how our ineffective political system is designed to encourage divisiveness, Bill shares the transpartisan message that a vast majority of us are eager and able to find solutions to all of the problems.

Our opinion hasn’t changed, especially in light or the red and blue waves that crashed together last autumn. The 70% that do not register as either Democrats or Republicans make their political statement in a voice so scattered that political leaders do not, or pretend to not, hear it. In This Together offers an opportunity for that voice to be focused and heard, making it one of many new initiatives leading the way towards a more transpartisan future. We will continue to watch In This Together carefully and report on its progress throughout 2021.

(Image from Pixabay.com. Additional text and editing by Andy Fluke.)

Unite America Responds to the Capitol Riot

“Capitol Violence Underscores Need for Political Reforms”

Transpartisan Note #139

shared by A. Lawrence Chickering and James S. Turner

We present this statement about the violence at the Capitol on January 6th from Unite America, one of the many groups we see as expressing the TANSPARTISAN Impulse in American society.  It speaks from an important point of view seeking expression within the American political process.  We believe the statement is an important contribution to understanding the nature of the events that are taking place in Washington DC and how Americans are responding to those events.

Nick Troiano, executive director of Unite America, shared this commentary about the Capitol Riot with RealClear Politics, expressing what many of us felt as we watched the events unfold:

A week ago, our nation was sorely tested as a deadly insurrection fueled by self-interested politicians and partisan disinformation aimed to overturn the legitimate results of the 2020 presidential election.

Those images made clear for all to see that our political division and gridlock no longer simply undermine the functioning of our government; they now threaten the very continuity of our democratic republic.

This is a moment not only for unequivocal words, but also for bold action: We must hold the leaders who betrayed the public trust accountable, and we must greatly accelerate nonpartisan reforms to break the doom loop of political polarization that is fueling growing unrest.

Unite America is, as described on their website, “a movement of Democrats, Republicans, and Independents working to put voters first by fostering a more representative and functional government.” They invest in campaigns to enact reforms and elect candidates so that “the right leaders have the right incentives” to solve our country’s greatest problems:

In 2020, Unite America supported a cross-partisan slate of candidates who had committed themselves to putting country over party and championing reforms to improve our political system. We are proud that most of these leaders, Democrats and Republicans alike, voted to uphold the will of the people in the last election. In particular, we express enormous gratitude to Rep. Peter Meijer, a Michigan Republican, who has been outspoken regarding the integrity of our elections and the need for honesty from our political leaders.

“It didn’t have to end like this, with five people dead, including a Capitol Police officer. This should be a moment of reckoning for the country as a whole, and the conservative movement in particular,” Meijer (pictured) said. “If the Republican Party ever hopes to regain the public’s trust and lead the country forward after this heinous assault, it must first be honest with itself.”

We agree. We also believe there must be accountability for all 147 members of Congress who voted to object to the Electoral College results certification — putting party over country — just hours after the U.S. Capitol was breached by a violent mob. Generations of Americans have risked their lives to protect that building and what it stands for, yet these members refused to even risk their jobs to uphold their oath of office to protect and defend our Constitution.

Unite America’s core mission to invest in “nonpartisan ballot initiatives and legislative campaigns that increase competition, participation, and accountability” supports “pro-reform, pragmatic candidates committed to putting people over party,” as Nick explains:

The key to fixing our politics is not just to change who we elect, but how we elect. As long as our leaders’ path to election runs through the extreme bases of both political parties, and as long as both political parties are insulated from any kind of new competition, our country will continue to be torn apart and our democracy will continue to fray.

The events of Jan. 6, 2021, must prompt a clarion call for Congress and state legislatures to eliminate partisan gerrymandering, closed primaries, plurality-winner elections, and barriers to voter participation that collectively disenfranchise citizens, distort representation, and fuel our division.

Read the full piece at RealClear Politics. RCP’s “daily editorial curation and original reporting” present balanced, non-partisan analysis that empowers readers to stay informed.

(Image CC BY 2.0 from Tyler Merbler on Flickr.com. Additional text and editing by Andy Fluke.)

AllSides Talks

When was the last time you talked politics with someone on the other side?

Transpartisan Note #138

by A. Lawrence Chickering and James S. Turner

At the heart of the transpartisan impulse lies the imperative to bring people with differing opinions together, encourage them to respect each other’s biases, and offer them the opportunity to seek solutions for their communities through meaningful conversations across political divides.

On January 23, 2021,  AllSides, the news platform that provides balanced perspectives by sharing information and ideas from “all sides” of the political spectrum, will be hosting AllSides Talks: a day of political dialogue embracing the very ideals that inspire this transpartisan impulse.

Asking “when was the last time you talked politics with someone on the other side?”, AllSides Talks  plans to bring hundreds of people from across America to “meet for one-on-one and small group conversations to discuss issues that matter to all Americans.”

Getting involved is easy. First AllSides Talks asks you to answer a few generic and non-intrusive questions about your political leanings and the issues facing America right now. You will then be matched with someone from another part of the country who answered the questions differently than you. If you choose to meet, you can arrange a video call using tools provided by AllSides to help make it a great conversation and experience.  We think this is good experiment to learn ways to integrate shared experiences dividing American politics.

The AllSides mission – to strengthen our democratic republic by freeing people from filter bubbles so they can better see the world and each other – is on full display when visiting their website. Using a unique “media bias rating” system to assess over 800 media outlets and authors, AllSides presents daily news and information from multiple sources with differing biases. The reader then gets to read and experience events from a variety of perspectives. This is an important initiative designed to remove the information separation contributing to political fights. We believe it is best for everyone to know where we disagree.

We feel the more opportunities the 70% of voting-eligible, politically-unaffiliated citizens have to engage with one another and the organized political parties, the more this “transpartisan impulse” will take hold. The more focused the remarkable, political energies exploding across American and global society are, the more positive the change within the political system will be.

Join your fellow citizens on January 23rd to be part of the process.

(Image from the AllSides website. Additional text and editing by Andy Fluke.)

Find-the-Matrix: Black Rappers for Trump

Transpartisan Note #137

by A. Lawrence Chickering and James S. Turner

We offer the Transpartisan Matrix as a descriptive, analytical, and energetic snapshot of contemporary American politics. Take a look at NY Times opinion writer Joe Coscarelli’s latest piece, Lil Wayne, Latest Rapper in Trump’s Orbit, Sees Backlash Over Photo from October 30th, 2020 and find the Matrix.

Coscarelli’s article reports how several powerful rappers (including Lil Wayne, Kanye West, 50 Cent, and Ice Cube) flirt with, embrace, or endorse President Trump and explores the backlash they received from other influential musicians and ardent fans.

The article, epically in its last paragraphs, captures the dynamic of the matrix – individual and structural pressures working on the Republican Right and the Democratic Left undulate across the political horizon. Successful outcomes for communities, we believe, result when politics integrates all four of the Matrix quadrants.

Those last paragraphs read:

In an interview, the writer, filmmaker and activist Dream Hampton called it “the hubris of the celebrity” for rappers to “kind of saunter in during the fourth quarter, talking about making demands.” She noted that while Black men will still overwhelmingly vote for Democrats – Mr. Biden leads 78-11 among Black men, according to a recent Times/Siena poll – a macho affinity for President Trump and the allure of economic success could explain his inroads with a certain segment of the hip-hop community.

“It’s the same reason they were referencing him in the ’90s – it’s about the lie of the American dream,” she said. “It’s about the lie of Black entrepreneurship somehow being a panacea to these larger social problems. Hip-hop became a stand-in for that, lifting up individual Black accomplishment.”

We think that the Transpartisan Matrix contributes to understanding what happened on November 3rd. Two days after the election, NY Times opinion columnist Jamelle Bouie wrote:

…the surprise of this election. Although it is still too early to make any definitive statement about the shape of the electorate (broad white support for Trump notwithstanding), it is clear that the president made modest inroads with Black and Hispanic voters, especially men. This is most apparent in the states of Florida, Georgia and Texas, where Trump outperformed his 2016 totals in several areas where Hispanic voters make up a majority.

We don’t yet know why Trump made those gains — although the aforementioned performances, which figured prominently in his outreach to those groups, may have something to do with it — but this shift is a useful reminder that politics does not move along a linear path. For all of our data, the political world is still a fundamentally unpredictable place.

We use the Matrix to provide a view of the voting from an angle different from Red/Blue, Republican /Democrat, Conservative/Progressive, or any other dualities.  We see dualities as overly linear. We see the Matrix as a small step toward guiding the breakout from dualism.

Read about Lil Wayne’s outreach to President Trump and Find-the-Matrix.

(Images of President Trump [public domain] and Lil Wayne by Chris Allmeid [CC BY-SA 4.0] found on Wikimedia Commons.)

Amy Coney Barrett

Justice Through a Transpartisan Lens

Transpartisan Note #136

by A. Lawrence Chickering and James S. Turner

Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) called new Justice Amy Coney Barrett “un-ashamedly pro-life” (NYTimes 10/14/20). This is history being made, folks. This is the first time in American history that we’ve nominated a woman who is unashamedly pro-life and embraces her faith without apology. And she’s going to the court.

Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA) joined in praising Justice Barrett saying “…the Constitution clearly states the ‘right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed,’ and Justice Barrett will interpret those words as written, which is a win for law-abiding Americans, including myself.” (Fox News 10/26/20)

In the debate over expansive versus limited government, the pro-gun, anti-abortion position – usually expressed by “conservatives” – presents the new justice with complex legal terrain.  The Constitution, the combined positions say, requires the Government to ban abortions and permit guns.

The “liberal” position reverses the demand saying the Constitution requires permitting abortions and allows restricting guns including banning some guns. A government that bans guns or abortions is expansive. One that allows guns or abortions is limited.

Justice Barrett laid out her legal strategy – follow the constitution.  As she expresses consistent opinions integrating expansive government needed to ban abortions with limited government necessary to require permitting guns, her originalist Constitutional reading might well lead to new law.

A failure of consistency might well lead to a new appreciation of the law’s limitations in social problem solving and a shakeup of the court. In our view, the Transpartisan Matrix gives clues of what this nation is up against as our society and government navigate their next evolutionary stage.

Surveys suggest that about 20% of Americans support abortion on demand. Eighty percent support some level of limitations. Surveys also suggest that 20% or so support all guns in the hands of law enforcement or the military. Eighty percent support some form of access to guns.

In the Transpartisan Matrix, those supporting free access to guns would be considered on the free right. Those supporting free access to abortions would be considered on the free left. Those seeking gun restriction and abortion restriction are order left and order right respectively.

The matrix assists in finding the precise legal pathway to the integration of limited and expansive government powers and helps remind us that authorities using government power to restrict my adversaries might also use that power to restrict me.

Welcome to the court Justice Barrett. May you help the union of freedom and order live long and prosper.

(Image is an official White House photo and in the public domain.)

How Important Is This Election?

Transpartisan Note #135

by A. Lawrence Chickering and James S. Turner

It is commonly said this election will be one of the most important in our lifetimes. In fact, both partisan sides say it is for ‘the Soul of America.’ [1] We heard one widely respected public figure express the view that he expected the current political crisis would end with the defeat of Donald Trump and accession of Joe Biden to the Presidency. Biden’s victory, which as of this writing seems likely but not assured, he said, “would restore the political system and the culture to ‘normal’”.

We hope it comes as no surprise to our readers that we doubt this will be the case. We believe such a sentiment fails to understand the real story behind President Trump’s victory four years ago and his governance since.

Misunderstanding the 2016 election begins, in our view, by imagining Trump is the cause rather than an effect of our widely recognized current national and global trouble. Understanding Trump as an effect requires understanding the forces in our politics and culture that brought Trump to power. From this perspective, Trump is at least as much an effect, as a cause, of the current crisis(es).

Trump came to power on the heels of widespread alienation from the partisan system controlled by the functioning of the two major political parties. This same alienation has fueled the steady expansion of voters registering Independent so that there are now more Independent than either Democratic or Republican voters.

If you add people who do not bother to register because they are deeply unhappy with both parties, we think the figure grows to about 70% of the age-eligible electorate, more than the total of both Democrats and Republicans combined. This 70% also aligns with Bill Shireman’s estimate [2] of ‘problem-solvers’ compared to ‘fighters’. Fighters, in his view, amount to 15%, making up the bases of each major party. These partisan fighters dominate the political lives of the transpartisan 70%.

The widespread, common assumption in the political debate is that the binary choice in elections represents the only choice voters have. A central assumption of each side in this dichotomy is that its side has all (100%) of the truth, and the opposition has no truth. No option exists which recognizes some truths on each side and tries to integrate them. You can only choose one.

However, eligible voters have a third choice: not voting. They are making that choice in droves. Finding a way for their voice to be felt and acted upon seems, to us, to be the task for addressing the crisis.  Electing either Trump or Biden will leave this underlying problem yet to be addressed.

The darkness-and-light vision that dominates our politics is ideally suited for the media and their entertainment business model. It delivers audiences to advertisers. About 40 million people watch cable (10 million) and broadcast (30 million) evening news casts.  Projected vote totals for 2020 are about 150 million.

These media numbers are close in percentage to the partisan political player ratio – about 70% avoid the evening news. Politicians and the media manage a lucrative power/money synergy working a third of the crowd for political and monetary profit. The other two-thirds of the public – those we call transpartisan – remain alienated from both partisan politics and the media.

Since the media joined with the political class in this commitment to polarization, it became easy to see why alienation from the system is as widespread as it is. In his 1997 book Breaking The News: How the Media Undermine American Democracy, James Fallows, of The Atlantic, laid out an early warning about the details of how our media undermines our politics.

What is wrong? How can one imagine a way out of our situation which so many consider desperate? We suggest that the crisis we see around us is one in which individuals are escaping two centuries of the constraints of tradition and law. In that framework, we can see this as a healing crisis. If it doesn’t kill us, it will make us stronger.

In this context, we think the root of the trouble is the intersection of decades-long, advancing ‘individuation’ of citizens breaking away from a continuing commitment by authorities to a concept of governance based entirely on representation. We believe the traditional system (some like to say when things were ‘normal’) started to weaken in the 1950s, falling into near collapse in the sixties.

‘Normality’ depended on the strength of tradition – fitting in – resisting demands for individual expression. The societal constraints on the individual began to weaken. The political class reacted by tightening the reins on individual empowerment. Individuals rebelled.

In the 1960s, rebellions against the rules broke out across the nation and the world.  Authorities put down the rebellions and sent troops into cities and university campuses, leading to the May 1970 Kent State and Jackson State killings.

In traditional times, people acquiesced to public schools run by ‘experts’ (administrators, teachers, and their unions) and to a health system focused negatively on sickness (also run by ‘experts’). Increasing demands for individual expression led to growing support for charter schools, alternative (including self-care) health approaches, and expanded sexual identities.

Between 1970 and 2020, the authorities tightened down the political rules.  In spite of the tightening, individuation kept growing – in gender and sexual identities and practices – through new information channels, and in the development of more individualized markets of consumer goods and services. Politics could not contain social/cultural individuation.

In management theory, the emergence of Theory Y (see below) empowered people to take initiative in decisions formerly made only by top management. Our political system is the only major governance system that has remained nearly unchanged in response to widespread demands for individual empowerment.

Both political parties retain the weak concept of citizenship that vests virtually all power in government officials, forcing citizens to maintain a passivity completely at odds with their psychological and existential individuation which, in turn, fuels their demands for empowerment. Collectively and individually, across the U.S. and around the world, individuals are breaking out of the enforced containment that separates them from their individual identities, resources, and aspirations.

In the context of this breakout, our political system is in a healing crisis. Individual empowerment demands to be heard. Our political system resists listening. No one in the current partisan political debate and system is effectively advancing, demanding, and relying on the importance of empowering citizens to play active citizenship roles. In debates on issues ranging from public school reform to health care; to drug and alcohol rehab programs to infrastructure building; and even to foreign and security policy, the engagement of citizens, an essential element to any possible success, is effectively crushed or diverted.

Our system will remain in crisis until we start communicating about the alienation that created a historic opportunity for Donald Trump, for which he turned out to be completely unfit. Until we focus this deep problem of politically alienated people that is growing every day; until we devise the ways to engage the powerful energy of empowered citizenship in addressing pressing issues, our political crisis will continue to grow. As we have often written, this vision of active citizenship is one of the most powerful features of all social service programs that are successful even when working with the most difficult and marginalized populations. This is true in the U.S. as well as in countries as diverse as India, Egypt, and Pakistan.

While we agree that Donald Trump continuing in office will exacerbate the problem, whoever wins, the deeper issue of disempowered citizenship will continue to drag down our political life, holding back the powerful opportunities of the Great Breakout currently underway across the world.

Our people are seeking a new form of Order out of Freedom.  Without a fundamentally different debate, one that expands the dichotomy to create an opportunity for the kaleidoscope of interests that animate each individual, the only alternative will seem to be authoritarianism.

The outcome of this, the most important election of our time, will point the way toward or away from the authoritarian option.

[1] see Biden and Trump Say They’re Fighting for America’s ‘Soul.’ What Does That Mean? by Elizabeth Dias, New York Times, Oct. 17, 2020,

[2] see Beating the Politics of Polarization by Bill Shireman and Transpartisan Breakthrough? How Covid Could Transform Politics by Chickering & Turner.

(Images of candidates by Gage Skidmore from Wikimedia Commons and licensed CC3.0.)

 

Understanding Theory X and Theory Y

Based on the theories of Social Psychologist Douglas McGregor.

Theory X and Theory Y were first explained by McGregor in his book, The Human Side of Enterprise, and they refer to two styles of management – authoritarian (Theory X) and participative (Theory Y).

If you believe that your team members dislike their work and have little motivation, then, according to McGregor, you’ll likely use an authoritarian style of management. This approach is very “hands-on” and usually involves micro-managing people’s work to ensure that it gets done properly. McGregor called this Theory X.

On the other hand, if you believe that your people take pride in their work and see it as a challenge , then you’ll more likely adopt a participative management style. Managers who use this approach trust their people to take ownership of their work and do it effectively by themselves. McGregor called this Theory Y.

The approach that you take will have a significant impact on your ability to motivate your team members. So, it’s important to understand how your perceptions of what motivates them can shape your management style.

(Excerpted from www.mindtools.com.)

“We are all Republicans, We are all Federalists”

Transpartisan Note #134

by A. Lawrence Chickering and James S. Turner

Thomas Jefferson used these words (as shared in Transpartisan Note #29) to bind the nation’s divisions in his first inaugural on March 4th, 1801. In the September 29th, 2020 edition of the NY Times, op-ed writer Jamelle Bouie uses his words to “look at the first and most consequential electoral crisis in American history: the election of 1800” and, in doing so, sets out the contours of the Transpartisan Matrix for the most consequential Presidential election in our early and perhaps our total American Constitutional history until 2020.

Bouie writes in There’s a Reason the Election of 1800 Still Sings Out to Us:

On Dec. 3 of that year [1800], the 138 members of the Electoral College gathered in their respective states to choose between Thomas Jefferson and the incumbent John Adams for president of the United States.

The last two years had been among the most tumultuous in the life of the young nation.

The 1800 US Presidential election squared off “order” Federalists against “freedom” Democratic-Republicans. The Electoral College deadlocked. The House took 35 inconclusive ballots between Thomas Jefferson and John Adams. On the 36th ballot, after seven days, the house settled on Jefferson for President and Aaron Burr for Vice President.

The House cast 36 ballots over seven days before it came to a decision. The representatives from Vermont and Maryland were still divided on their choice for president, but rather than drag the fight out further, Federalist holdouts in both delegations abstained. Their Democratic-Republican colleagues then cast their states’ votes for Jefferson. With 10 votes to four for Burr (two states chose not to vote), Jefferson had finally won the presidency. No Federalist congressman voted in his favor.

Read Bouie’s column and see if you can find how Democratic-Republicans and Federalists maneuvered the nation through the Transpartisan Matrix into a position to keep the twelve-year-old U.S. Constitutional experiment alive. Look for the Matrix.

Of all the elements self-government needs to survive, it’s this awareness — the knowledge that power wanes, for you and your opponents — that matters most. When a democracy loses this awareness, when there is a party or a faction or even a demographic that refuses to admit or accept defeat, it finds itself on life-support, risking terminal decline.

Compare and contrast the 1800 and 2020 Presidential elections. In either case, if you see or do not see the Matrix in the 1800 election, let us know what, how, and why you see what you see by sharing your thoughts in the comments below.

(Images from Wikimedia Commons and are in the public domain.)

Transpartisan Matrix: A Lens that Offers Hope

Transpartisan Note #133

by A. Lawrence Chickering and James S. Turner

New York Times writer, Joan C. Williams, in her op-ed The Case for Accepting Defeat on Roe reminds us to look to the Transpartisan Matrix for hope in times of political conflict. Ms. Williams, a right-to-abortion-choice advocate law professor, shares this interesting, arresting observation:

Often forgotten is that R.B.G. herself had decided that Roe was a mistake. In 1992, she gave a lecture musing that the country might be better off if the Supreme Court had written a narrower decision and opened up a “dialogue” with state legislatures, which were trending “toward liberalization of abortion statutes” (to quote the Roe court). Roe “halted a political process that was moving in a reform direction and thereby, I believe, prolonged divisiveness and deferred stable settlement of the issue,” Justice Ginsburg argued. In the process, “a well-organized and vocal right-to-life movement rallied and succeeded, for a considerable time, in turning the legislative tide in the opposite direction.”

Note the convergence she suggests once the Supreme Court’s role in abortion decisions is removed by a solid majority to reverse or effectively reverse Roe v. Wade.

I’m still reluctant to embrace the “overrule and move on” strategy, but moving on may be our only choice. And if abortion stops playing such a role in presidential elections, then Democrats may fare better with the 19 percent of Trump voters who have bipartisan voting habits and warm feelings toward minorities; we know 83 percent of them think the economy is rigged in favor of the rich and 68 percent favor raising taxes on the rich.

Once their presidential vote is not driven by Supreme Court appointments, how many might decide to vote on economic issues?

The article is a reminder that the Transpartisan Matrix offers an opportunity to see even the most impacted issue through a lens offering hope for positive resolution to both sides of the contentious partisan-political conflict.  Read and reflect on what might have been… and on what might come. Share your thoughts in the comments below.