Transpartisan Notes

Transpartisan Note #22

by A. Lawrence Chickering and James S. Turner

Barack Obama and Donald Trump share a common aversion to ‘nation-building’ in foreign policy. It is clear why they agree about this: because U.S. foreign policymakers have shown no understanding of how to do it, and their failures have been massively expensive.

Despite past failures, nation-building is an essential component of successful foreign and security policy toward the ‘weak states’ or ‘tribal societies’ that became our primary policy concerns after 9/11. Especially in the larger Middle East, these societies feature weak central governments and strong non-state actors and forces, including culture. They are very different from the ‘strong states’ that were our traditional enemies (Nazi Germany, the USSR, and communist China).

Aid policy under both Bush and Obama was guided by no clear vision. Projects were funded that bypassed laws, cultures, and customs—and built up a vast parallel structure supposedly building projects for people. Unsurprisingly, these projects alienated people, who often had little role in their choice, planning or implementation.

Community empowerment, as in the National Solidarity Program in Afghanistan, is the answer for these societies. The institutions that are usually predatory to people also need to be reformed. Serious reform and community empowerment has just not been tried.

Community empowerment will help promote the social development of traditional people, expanding identity beyond traditional roles and honoring individual values. This will increase social trust beyond family and tribe to other, larger communities, including the state.

Traditional foreign policy institutions have no capacity to promote subjective changes in identity and culture. Promoting these subjective changes will require new strategies and even different actors than those involved in traditional foreign policy. Civil society organizations need to play the leading role in promoting these objectives. Indigenous CSOs, representing and empowering people and communities and owning the solutions, must play the most important roles.

Three names are circulating for President-elect Trump’s Secretary of State: Rudi Guiliani, GEN David Petraeus, and Mitt Romney. Who would be most qualified to provide leadership for this transpartisan component in a new foreign policy?

Petraeus alone has direct experience operating in such environments, building security by empowering local communities. In evaluating candidates for Secretary of State, we hope the President-elect will appreciate this aspect of the case for Petraeus.

(Image from Wikipedia and licensed in the Public Domain.)

Transpartisan Note #21

by A. Lawrence Chickering and James S. Turner

EXTREME ORDER LEFT AND RIGHT

Progressive critics of President-elect Trump are producing a blizzard of warnings about authoritarianism both in the President-elect and in many of his followers. They are right to be concerned about anti-democratic sentiment from any source. Similar authoritarianism can be part of mass demonstrations against the new administration. We need to worry about this. These examples tend to be extreme expressions of the order right and order left.

If mass demonstrations protesting the election escalate, they may make it difficult if not impossible for Trump to govern. If Trump seeks to suppress his adversaries it may be impossible for the country to embrace any of his initiatives. The impulse toward authoritarianism on both left and right is fed in part by the low turnout of voters—it appears that fewer than 50% of age eligible voters cast ballots in 2016.

The problem is deep divisions in our society’s political party culture. This intuition is hard to avoid: when people are so deeply conflicted about their political choices that they vote reluctantly or not at all, and informal accommodation of differences is difficult if not impossible to achieve, it should not be surprising that authoritarian impulses appear on both sides, each seeking to impose its will on the other.

Candidate Trump repeatedly showed his anti-democratic tendencies, in the end implying he would accept the election result only if he won. Progressives expressed strong opposition to him for this statement (and many others), and since the election have doubled-down accusing many of his followers of being anti-democratic and racist. Some are now organizing mass demonstrations to obstruct his governing. They do not accept the election results either, and they want to impose their will on the country. Tyranny begets tyranny.

Who is Trump? How will he govern? Public comments vary all over the place. Dan Balz in the Washington Post November 20, 2016 calls Trump our first Independent President. Who are the demonstrators? What do they hope to achieve? See here. These questions about the next four years highlight what we have said repeatedly: our democracy will be threatened as long as the two major parties— representing, together, significantly fewer than half the people—continue to ignore those who either refuse to identify with them or opt out altogether. The truth is, the very structure of our political system, controlled by a political minority, is functionally undemocratic.

Never has the transpartisan vision been more important to bring people together and begin to restore the trust on which all healthy democracies depend.

(Photo by Fibonacci Blue and licensed CC BY 2.0.)

MEDITATING ON THE ANOMALIES

Transpartisan Note #20

by A. Lawrence Chickering and James S. Turner

It is impossible to comment on this election without retreating into clichés. Everything that could be said has been said. How should transpartisans be looking at what happened? What might reality look like with Trump as President?

Not pretending to know, we are looking for clues. We see clues that this archetypical anti-transpartisan may move in surprising directions.

The clues come from anomalies indicating complexity difficult for people to see. In reflecting on it, we must be clear about the difference between partisans and transpartisans.

Partisans are creatures of substance, driven by policy agendas: their views of race, tax policy, and foreign policy. With different views, conservatives and progressives, Democrats and Republicans, are partisans in their commitment to substance.

Transpartisans are guided more by process than by substance: bringing people together, highlighting (where possible) the best in each. Our Four-Quadrant Matrix is a tool for this, with partial truths in each quadrant (freedom and order on both left and right). Partial truths. Our guiding process is to bring these complementary truths and their advocates together in an integrated whole.

Where does Trump fit in this analysis? In the campaign he was extremely, even brutally, partisan: build a wall, kill Obamacare, send Hillary to jail. But now the anomalies: by post-election rhetoric, he will keep parts of Obamacare, the wall is forgotten (at least for now), prosecuting Hillary appears to be gone, and he has backed away from deporting all illegal immigrants.

If Trump is not an extreme partisan, what is he?

Perhaps . . . a deal-maker? This may explain his ignorance and even indifference to policy details. Knowing too much makes it hard for deal-makers because it may restrict their hearing others and bringing them together.

We are waaayyy out of the box here. But that is where we are most comfortable: we don’t ever want to see the box closing in on us.

(Image from Wikipedia and licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.)

Transpartisan Note #19

by A. Lawrence Chickering and James S. Turner

Registered Republicans and Democrats combined make up a minority (40%) of the U.S. voting age population. Of the remaining 60% about 30% identify as independents, and about 30% don’t bother registering at all. Most Americans opt out of the two-party system. We are led by a minority of voters—a small minority, in fact.

Just before Election Day, The Washington Post wrote that after this ‘ugly contest’ between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, ‘voter frustrations underscore a stark reality confronting the winner: much of the country will have very low expectations for what the next president might accomplish.’

The fact that registered Republicans and Democrats combined represent a minority of the country’s electorate may help explain the contentiousness of the election, voters’ unhappiness, and their low expectations for the next president. Most Americans feel their voice goes unheard by politicians of both parties.

Four years ago, before the 2012 election, Linda Killian, of the Woodrow Wilson Center for Scholars, wrote: ‘Washington and the nation at large may seem polarized, but a majority of voters . . . don’t fit into either political party or neatly in the center.’ Our 2008 book Voice of the People cited Brookings and Hoover Institution data showing little polarization among voters but intense partisan hostility among professional Dems and Reps.

Besides the widespread public alienation, whoever wins will face multiple challenges in the government: historically low social trust, paralysis on policy reforms, and huge conflict on foreign and security policy, with abandonment of purely partisan policy essential for restored global confidence in American leadership.

The forces pushing conflict will remain strong at the center, especially from media that live off promoting and then deploring conflict. Bringing the transpartisans (those who don’t identify as either Reps or Dems) from the margins to the core is a task that could contribute to better, less contentious outcomes.

Leaders who want to succeed might look for ways to decentralize policy implementation to local levels, where personal engagement, trust, low conflict, flexible party expression, and media indifference are combining on a multiplicity of issues to bring people together and allow leaders to start solving problems.

(Photos by Gage Skidmore and licensed CC BY-SA 3.0.)

Transpartisan Note #18

by A. Lawrence Chickering and James S. Turner

The National Coalition for Dialogue and Deliberation (NCDD) held its seventh biannual national conference on October 14-16 in Boston. Many major figures in the dialogue and transpartisan movements were there, led by Sandy Heierbacher, NCDD co- founder and long-time head.

We attended for The Transpartisan Review. Many people expressed interest, and we came away with many ideas to address and people to work with.

Among many extraordinary individuals we met, one was John Hardin, of the Charles Koch Foundation, who cheerfully expressed astonishment at how Charles Koch, whose passion is freedom, has become such a toxic brand. Underscoring the reach of the transpartisan imperative, Mr. Hardin pointed out that Mr. Koch, vilified by many progressives, supported gay rights, racial reconciliation, legalization of drugs, criminal justice reform and reducing sentences for victimless crimes. He also warns against interventionist foreign policies without serious caution. It seems that people need not agree on everything to make common cause on many things. (At TTR, we look forward to providing a forum for discovering how institutional structures, based in freedom, can attract transpartisan support in areas still to be discovered.)

We reflected on the difference between the ‘dialogue’ positions of most people and our Four-Quadrant Transpartisan positions. The Four-Quadrant position recognizes at least six different ‘dialogue’ positions on virtually every political issue. We came away believing that greater effort should be made to recruit conservatives, both freedom and order, to events like this by showing them the importance of personal and spiritual engagement as key to promoting understanding between people who are ‘different’. (See Note #16.)

Race provides a good example, which was on the minds of many people. Most focused on dialogues looking back rather than institutional reforms looking forward. Some people acknowledged that while dialogue looking back could reduce past pain, it would have limited value for the future without more.

Looking forward, institutional and leadership reform can play a crucial role in promoting personal engagement that allows people to engage each other as individuals rather than see them, at a distance, as a group without real engagement—therefore, as ‘other’. Civil society organizations, which are all but invisible in the current debate, need to play an important role in this.

The key to reducing fear around ‘differences’ is personal contact, demystifying others and experiencing them as human.

(Photo by conference participant Catalina NavaEsparza (‏@CatalinaNava2) and shared on Twitter.)

Transpartisan Note #17

by A. Lawrence Chickering and James S. Turner