All candidates seem to claim ‘I’m a uniter’

I have reached a point in my life that I just want to have every hour of every day be as peaceful as possible. I don’t like any hassles at all. I do whatever I can to make them non-existent. 

It has even gotten to the point that if I can’t get someone to see my point of view I just start backing off rather than the old Maurice who would just keep on pushing. 

This is probably why I have been taken in by political candidates who say they are tired of the bickering and lack of progress in Washington and want to bring politicians together. I was impressed by George W.  Bush when he first started talking about being a uniter not a divider. I was turned off by his brain, Carl Rove, and his political tactics especially when he started criticizing veterans and how they got their wounds or served their country. He didn’t always do it himself, but he did promote the attacks. This is not the way a uniter works.   

We are faced with another presidential election and another round of candidates trying to convince me and everyone else that they should be the one sitting in the White House. There is the usual outcry about negative ads, and that is matched by the statistics that show they work.

There is also a repeat of trying to unite the Congress and the country. Uniting the country may look like a more difficult task, but I suggest that uniting the Congress is a far more difficult task. As Americans we generally like to feel that we are united in most areas and look to someone who do just that. The problem is that when we spend so much trying to figure out who will unite us, we overlook other reasons why they want to be elected.

A case in point would be our present president. He road into the White House on a platform that he was gong to unite the Congress and get things done. He, like almost every candidate that I can remember in my lifetime, was gong to improve how Washington was run. My mind isn’t nearly as good as it used to be, but I cannot remember a candidate that did not at least mention how they were going to improve how things were being run in Washington. 

To me it is like the promise of no new taxes. It makes good campaign talk but it seldom gets done. I wondered why almost everyone who talks about uniting Congress to get more done has generally failed.  The cause of this failure is easy to find. Our government was not set up to run free of disagreements. In fact it was set up to do just the opposite. So uniting a Congress goes against the process. 

The unity generally comes when the legislation is passed, not while it is in the process of coming together.

It even took a compromise to bring this two house form of government into being. A quick refresher course in early American history reminded me that what is now called the Great Compromise took months to decide. In June of 1787 in the Philadelphia heat our first leaders fought over almost everything, but in the end they accepted compromises. 

The key word here is compromise. They were trying to make sure that everyone would be represented in some way, thus everyone would have a voice in their own government. I can just imagine this group of, what drawings show, were over dressed gentlemen arguing and cajoling each other in hot stuffy rooms.  Remember they did not have air conditioning and ice was almost non existent in the summer time. If they did wear the wigs we see in pictures they would really be hotheads. But none of this mattered; they had a mission that could only be resolved by arguing their various points of view.   

In the end it came down to combining what was called the New Jersey Plan and the Virginia Plan. The New Jersey Plan was debated for four days and rejected. It ended up being the groundwork for the senate with two representatives appointed by each state. This plan pleased the small states because it meant that everyone would have the same representations. 

The Virginia Plan was debated for two weeks. It was built around representation by the states’ population or money contributions.The larger states loved this. It meant that they would have more of a say because they had more of the people. It is probably worth noting that money contributions was a method being discussed.    

As we know they ended up with a little of both. By doing so they knew that it would take a great effort to get bills and laws passed and into the hands of the President for signature. They set our form of government down a path that recognized that we would be a county of compromise.

Compromise by definition means that someone or all parties have to give up something. It is almost like the fathers of our country are playing a joke on us. They fought for us to be free, and then they said but you cannot be completely free to do whatever you want you have to agree with others as to how free you will be. Of course we know that the final goal was to make sure we were as free as possible government interference.   

After working with this new form of government for over 171 years, Sir Winston Churchill said, “…democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.” He apparently knew that with all the arguing, agreements could be made and made to work for all.

In a democracy we have to compromise and compromise by definition means bringing together differences of opinions. Sounds great but we have been raised to believe that we must fight for what we believe in. Fighting itself leads to division.

We often joke about the simple task of deciding between two people of where to go for dinner. This is part of our daily lives. So why do we expect our politicians that we elect based on our own needs, wants and desires, to get along and be buddy-buddy with one another?

We may not like the deep divisions that have once again become part of our politics, but to think that we will be able to send one person to Washington to put an end to all of it is, in my opinion a dream. And like all dreams when the election is over and the winner sits in the White House, reality sets in. 

The reality is that we have a form of government that recognizes we will continually have disagreements, but provides a solution for them to be ironed out in a way that we can generally live with. I would love to be free of any hassles, but in this life it is just part of life. I am fortunate enough to live in a country where we have fewer hassles in our daily life than almost anywhere else in the world. 

Maurice Emery is the Editor Emeritus of The Littleton Observer. In addition to regular news coverage for the paper, he also writes a weekly column.

Check out his blog at www.athoughtortwo.com

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