Notes on Chapter 05

This was the first chapter where some of the ideas weren't there at the beginning.  That writing produces discovery of new thoughts - I think it's called writing to learn - is quite familiar to me.  The part that was new here is the time lag it took to produce the new thoughts, weeks instead of hours or days.  One advantage for me as a learner is to allow that sort of gestation period to occur on its own by staying with the overall project for a greater length of time.

In this case the big connection is that for Checks and Balances to be effective, it must result in compromise.  Anthony Kennedy on the Supreme Court instead of Robert Bork provides a great example.  

The issue of how far we might go in order to achieve an effective compromise is not something we talk about much these days.  I slipped in something of this sort into the narrative when Caroline observes that her father was a Reagan Republican.  In much writing by liberals (which I'm more inclined to read than writing by conservatives) the Reagan Presidency was the beginning of this great shift to the right - both on the economic front via big tax cuts and on the culture wars front.  To think of the Reagan years as the good old days probably will require many liberals to take a step or two back and ask - do I really agree with that?  

On the other hand, there is no doubt that the Republicans continued to move to the right after Reagan.  The question with compromise is whether you gin it up, or you call it what it really is.  I didn't get that far in the story, but my hope would be this.  Going with the gin-it-up approach may be necessary at first to get people to play along.  Eventually the reality becomes apparent to everyone and the compromise can be understood on those terms.  

It is my impression that very little rhetoric these days is spent on promoting compromise solutions.  Their virtue has to be seen in comparison to the alternative where both sides aspire for purist solutions, which ends up producing gridlock.  If compromise is better for everyone than gridlock that is the argument in favor of it.  But it requires people seeing that gridlock is likely, rather than that they can have it all. 

I didn't write about this, but there is a strong belief among liberals that the Filibuster is bad. And if the minority party has no intention to compromise, that may be true.  But perhaps, the Filibuster needs to be reconsidered, once compromise no longer is a dirty word.  This is something to scratch our heads about.

Here is one other point on the story.  Nicole's suggestion seems obvious.  That Caroline didn't have it in her thinking at the start is not meant to be a criticism of her, but rather a different point is being made.  Nobody can plan everything from the start and stick with it.  Events are hard to predict.  At some point plans must be modified to account for the reality at the time. Being too rigid is not good.