As seen in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Saturday, June 10, 2023.

While Congress has grandstanded and battled with the debt ceiling and the budget as if they were a sacred document, it is helpful to remember that compromise is also sacred. “Compromise” has become a dirty word in national politics in the United States, especially among “true believers” who consider it immoral.

The most ardent ideologues often come from the right wing, for example Pro-life or Pro-Gun Rights advocates, but there are some liberal politicians, Sen.Bernie Sanders, Rep. Rashida Tlaib, and Rep. Cori Bush come to mind, who consider politics a zero-sum game, where every concession to the other side is a defeat.

Tlaib and Bush could not bring themselves to honor fallen policemen in a recent bill (HR 363), which Tlaib and Bush described as “a document intended to advance Republicans’ false narrative around supporting law enforcement and gaslight the public about where they stand.” The unmistakeable language of ideology and division shows a disdain for compromise, even in a good cause.

Although he is portrayed by some Christians as a spirited antagonist of the Pharisees and Sadducees, Jesus was very much a compromiser. Asked about paying taxes to Caesar, the hot political issue of his day, he threaded the needle by saying “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and unto to God the things that are God’s.” He took a deliberately apolitical stand to answer a political question.

Jesus also spoke of compromise with opponents in a lawsuit, when he said, “Settle matters quickly with your adversary who is taking you to court” (Matthew 5:25).   He revealed a negotiator’s pragmatism when he added, “Do it while you are still together on the way, or your adversary may hand you over to the judge, and the judge may hand you over to the officer, and you may be thrown into prison.” He was not giving attorney’s advice, he was illustrating the vanity of fighting to get your own way. 

Compromise is the ultimate premise of democracy and morality. It is an American and a Christian value.  It goes right back to the Golden Rule to “Do unto others . . . .”  It does not diminish ideals or convictions. It shows the humility of pragmatism, the willingness to reconcile, rather than dominate.

Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson, bitter political enemies, compromised to legislate Hamilton’s financial plan.

The Compromise of 1790 was a compromise among Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison, where Hamilton won the decision for the national government to take over and pay the state debts, and Jefferson and Madison obtained the national capital, called the District of Columbia, for the South. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compromise_of_1790#:~:text=The%20Compromise%20of%201790%20was,of%20Columbia%2C%20for%20the%20South

Compromise has a bad name in the United States because of the fiery rhetoric of campaigning, where the words “fighting”  and “defending” take priority. “Campaign” is a word common to war and politics. No one wins an election using words like “understanding” and “reconciling,” yet these are words that are key to governing, where majorities are formed by listening and conceding. One American p0litician to acknowledge this was Henry Clay.

Clay,”The Great Compromiser,” never gained the fame of his contemporary, President Andrew Jackson, known as a warrior and Indian-slayer who opposed the national bank, which proved Clay’s undoing as a Presidential candidate in 1832.

Clay sought the Whig Party’s nomination in 1840, 1844, and 1848; only in 1844 was he successful, meeting frustrating losses to William Henry Harrison and Zachary Taylor, respectively. And in his 1844 race against James Polk, Clay opposed the annexation of Texas, sealing his defeat in the face of national obsession with manifest destiny.

Clay, as a Representative and Senator and a perennial failure as candidate for President, struggled to keep the Union together from 1820-1850 and designed compromise bills in Congress that held off the forces of secession for a decade. As Clay said once said:

If any man wants the key to my heart, let him take the key of the Union and that is the key to my heart.

Clay was best known for his compromise legislation to admit, Missouri and Kansas (1820) and later California, New Mexico, and Utah (1850) as either “free” (Kansas and California) “slave” (Missouri) or optionally free or slave (Utah and New Mexico).  These bills kept the Union together in the decades preceding the Civil War, but they never promoted Clay beyond the title “Speaker of the House.”

Clay was a slave owner, but campaigned against slavery and freed his remaining slaves in his will. In his successful “Compromise of 1850” you see the trade-offs that could be criticized by both pro- and anti- slavery advocates.  Clay’s bottom line was to keep the Union together. He died before he could see the shattering of his dream–the Civil War.

The legacy of Henry Clay, and the important subtext of the Gospels, is lost to many in the U.S. Congress, despite its recent success raising the debt ceiling.  A vocal minority wanted a larger piece of the pie.  For them, “compromise” was a dirty word.  It does not bode well for the remaining time before the election of 2024.

Will compromise ever return to good standing in the United States? Will the next President be a “fighter” or a “compromiser”?