Absolutism vs Compromise and the power of words

Words matter.

In 450 BC, Euripides opined, “The tongue is mightier than the blade,” and this adage is at the heart of democracy.

Radical factions differ loudly. The Tea Party believes if they attack first and think later they can injure the establishment. Better yet, bring it down. With the recent government shutdown, they sought to defund and destroy President Obama’s signature affordable health care act and shut his government. They attacked Caesar, for they perceived Obama to be an illegitimate President. “Kenyan, anti-colonial” and “outside our comprehension”, sneered Newt Gingrich, the intellectual father of government shutdowns and Speaker of the House in 1995, when he did just that.

The birther movement is nothing more than a racist slur and assault on the legitimacy of President Barack Obama.

Newt Gingrich is an intellect and he is smart. He’s just not smart enough. Good politics is not a utopian concept as Communism was or Newt Gingrich’s Futurist ideology is, but a fine-tuned practical art. Like architecture, and it demands compromise. To design a building, one has to balance the competing needs of various factions, including the patron, the artist, and the pull of money with practicality. Most buildings cannot be wild and massively expensive Frank Gehry curvilinear contraptions, but boring structures that provide the essentials such as office space and/or living quarters. If an architect is innovative, imaginative or lucky, he might design something compelling. That is rare. If all elements align, one might be blessed and design Falling Water.

So too, good governance is dull. It means managing a massive bureaucracy, levying taxes and paying the bills on time. Snore. How much more exciting it is to hold the Senate hostage for 21 hours straight and proclaim from the pulpit of the Senate chamber that he is merely defending democracy from tyranny, even as he mitigates the very institution he claims to love.

So too, how thrilling it is to fire a firearm in a theatre at a President and scream as leaping heroically to the stage, “Sic semper tyrannis!” even while performing the most absolute, terrible and tyrannical act possible. 9/11 was such a cruel moment, and while al Qaeda murdered thousands of innocents, they only demonstrated it is far easier to destroy than create.

As a sometimes New Yorker in the 1990s, I was no fan of those leviathan structures bin Laden brought down. They lacked the grace and beauty of the Empire State Building or distinct, sharp and linear modernistic sensibilities of the Seagram Building. However the twin towers became integral to the New York skyline, and over time we came to appreciate their gracelessness and hulk, and we even laughed in awe as we witnessed a man dancing on a wire between the buildings a hundred stories up.

The imperfect and frustrating compromise that were those buildings was then demolished by the absolute tyranny of terrorism.

Our government isn’t flawless, but it is a thing of beauty and a celebration of compromise. The mall in Washington is common ground. Quiet. People generally behave there, and it represents the best of us. It provides a platform for a singer to sing, even as the Daughters of the American Revolution denied her a stage to sing. And there in that same spot a great man once sang in speech, “I have a dream.”

In 2009 at Barack Obama’s inauguration, Tom Hanks read from Aaron Copland’s “A Lincoln Portrait,” the words of Abraham Lincoln, and I cried as I heard those words.

Chris Matthews said at a recent book signing for his new book, Tip and the Gipper: When Politics Worked, at Politics & Prose, the politically themed bookstore on Connecticut Ave. that “Barack Obama is a perfect President.”

Matthews said that if one listens to what the man says, witness his integrity and morality, and experience his calm demeanor and excellence, even in the face of fierce opposition, one will know this is indeed a great man who is our President. Matthews said when he heard the lucidity of Barack Obama speaking in New Hampshire in 2007, he knew then this man could be president.

I didn’t.

I thought it was a far-fetched notion to consider this divided but united, United States, was ready for a bi-racial man to lead this nation. My mother had donated thousands of dollars early to his first campaign and earned herself an official engraved invitation to his inauguration. She didn’t go and neither did I, but she framed the document along with the Obama’s 2012 Christmas card of their dog, Bo, in the snow on the South lawn of the White House.

Mathews’ book is timely in the wake of the Tea Party shutdown. He tells in vivid detail how the two polar political opposites, Tip O’Neil and Ronald Reagan, saw past their differences toward a larger goal and compromise that benefited everyone. Not that they weren’t human and didn’t get emotive or cross the line of dignity toward an ad hominem now and then, but when they fouled, such as the time Tip O’Neil quipped that Ronald Reagan wasn’t on top of his facts, these men were gentlemen and apologized.

Perhaps the most moving segment of the book was Matthews’ description of Tip O’Neil visiting President Reagan in the hospital after the assassination attempt: Tip O’Neil knelt to the floor and held the stricken President’s hand, his political opponent, and prayed while reading Psalm 23:

The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.
He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.
He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.
Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.

E Pluribus Unum. Words are what we use to walk the tightrope of compromise between the scuffle of litigious struggle and the compromise of common ground.  With them, they possess the power to formulate the greatest government humankind has witnessed.

Douglas Christian

Douglas Christian is a multimedia Capitol Hill reporter. He has covered the 2016 Democratic and Republican conventions as a photographer and has produced numerous audio and video reports for Talk Media News. He has written scores of articles and op-ed pieces for the Baltimore Post Examiner, touching on politics to the arts and to hi-tech.

Douglas has worked as a photographer for decades. He has produced a few books on Oriental rugs; one was on Armenian Oriental rugs and the other was published by Rizzoli and co-authored by his uncle entitled, ‘Oriental Rugs of the Silk Route’. Douglas attended the Putney School in Vermont, a tiny progressive school in Vermont, where he became enthralled with photography and rebuilt a 4×5 camera. Later during college, he attended the Ansel Adams Workshop at Yosemite, where he determined to pursue photography. He transferred to the School of the Museum of Fine Arts and received a BFA from Tufts. He has photographed an array of people including politicos such as William F. Buckley, Jr., George McGovern, Edward Teller and Cesar Chavez. His photography URL is www.photographystudio.com. His twitter feed is @xiwix. He currently resides in Washington, D.C.

www.photographystudio.com