bedsitter23

Compromise is a very important thing these days.  The coming together of two different parties - agreeing to work it out instead of just walking off in a huff.

Probably no bigger example of that than the Sequester.

We have seen both sides going at it, until things have escalated to the point where the GOP wants to take away Obama's golf outings, which had been escalated from Obama taking away White House visits (This angers the GOP because it's one of the perks Congressmen can dole out).

But this post isn't about that.

Nor is this post about Kim Jong Un and Dennis Rodman- perhaps the oddest example of diplomacy in recent history. 



It's been years and years since people's opinion on Rodman was simply "He's a good rebounder", but here he was bringing the US together with the Axis of Evil (and if the Red Dawn remake is to be believed, America's biggest threat).

No, this post is about an article I got in my e-mail.  As the years have gone by, i have gotten on several business, HR and diversity e-mails.

One highlighted a recent post by the president of Emory University James W Wagner.

Emory is a well-respected university in Atlanta.  It is graduated Newt Gingrich, as well as CEO's of Moody's, Burger King, and Met Life.

In this time where the two sides could not be further apart, where blue and red, right and left, Democrat and Republican are digging in their heels and compromise is a dirty word, Wagner wanted to put in a good word for compromise.

So... what did President Wagner use as his example of working together.

President Reagan and Tip O'Neil?  The Connecticut Compromise which created a Senate and a House of Representatives?  Lincoln and his Team of Rivals?

How about that one compromise we learned about in American History class?

Remember the one where southern states wanted slaves to count for representation purposes, but Northern states didn't want them to figure in to how many Congressmen the states got?  So the two sides decided slaves would count as 3/5 of a person when counting population.

Yeah...that's the one Wagner decided to highlight in an article titled "As American as Compromise" 

One instance of constitutional compromise was the agreement to count three-fifths of the slave population for purposes of state representation in Congress. Southern delegates wanted to count the whole slave population, which would have given the South greater influence over national policy. Northern delegates argued that slaves should not be counted at all, because they had no vote. As the price for achieving the ultimate aim of the Constitution—“to form a more perfect union”—the two sides compromised on this immediate issue of how to count slaves in the new nation. Pragmatic half-victories kept in view the higher aspiration of drawing the country more closely together.

Some might suggest that the constitutional compromise reached for the lowest common denominator—for the barest minimum value on which both sides could agree. I rather think something different happened. Both sides found a way to temper ideology and continue working toward the highest aspiration they both shared—the aspiration to form a more perfect union. They set their sights higher, not lower, in order to identify their common goal and keep moving toward it.

As I write this, our country’s fiscal conundrums invite our leaders to wrestle with whether they will compromise or hold fast to certain of their pledges and ideologies about the future of our nation’s economic framework. Whatever the outcome of this fiscal debate over the next months or years, the polarization of our day and the lessons of our forebears point to a truth closer to our university.

Yeah, probably should have picked something else to illustrate your point, Prez.