Commentary: Can't we get back to solving problems?

We are once again in the thick of a presidential election cycle at risk of being dominated by spectacle and far too light on substance. As in 2016 and 2020, sensationalist developments — most recently an attempted assassination of one candidate and the bowing out of another — have transfixed the media 24/7.

While these recent events were arguably worthy of the attention they received, too often even fairly mundane developments such as Donald Trump’s rants and Joe Biden’s gaffes seem to become a media obsession. Such coverage distracts us from the pressing consequential issues facing our country and indeed the world.

Without trying to sound Pollyannaish, the goal of government and public policy is to solve problems that threaten our well being and prosperity. Yet somehow such discussions are relegated to a back seat in favor of entertaining yet trivial memes. In this regard, our entire electoral-media complex could use a reboot.

So let’s start with the basics. In addition to securing citizens’ inalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness (as articulated in our credo), for a liberal democracy to properly function the government must assume an additional portfolio of activities. In simple terms:

Correct for market failures (e.g. externalities, monopolistic power, unequal access to infrastructure and information, etc.), thereby preserving a capitalistic free-market economy.

Invest, build and ensure uniform access to valuable public goods like common defense, public education and job training, which together provide equal access to opportunity.

Achieve better equity across the strata of society through redistribution so that all can have access to liberty and freedom and enjoy a basic ability to pursue happiness — that is, to provide a safety net for those who cannot do so on their own.

In our role as consumers and citizens we must demand not only that our elected leaders demonstrate a solutions orientation, but that they achieve actual results. If, instead, too many of us demand the intrigue and drama of the spectacle, we become transfixed by the inevitable search for winners and losers, while in reality holding no one accountable for results.

Even the top echelon of our political leadership reinforces this maladaptive pattern. Case in point: Back in 2017 after Trump’s victory over Hillary Clinton, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., remarked: “They had their shot in the election … but in this country, when you win the election you get to make policy. I always remind people, winners make policy and losers go home.”

An apt sentiment, perhaps, if it was coming from the mouth of a coach who’d just won a tournament. But from one of the country’s top legislative leaders in our democratic republic, it’s both depressing and inaccurate. In fact, McConnell’s take is antithetical to the very concept of democracy in which everyone — not just the winning side — belongs in the conversation.

McConnell’s tone-deaf understanding symbolizes the Trump-era political belief that one faction has the power to force its will by imposing draconian measures. However, the philosophy of dividing and excluding the losers from the conversation is incompatible with democracy. So what does winning an election mean?

Danielle Allen, Harvard University professor of government, argues that “winning” in the context of a democracy simply identifies who gets the authority to lead the conversation, to chair the committee responsible for crafting the policy. But in any particular policy debate, it is the responsibility of the “winners” to bring the “losers” back into a conversation that includes many perspectives. In other words, there are no winners or losers.

Modern presidents (Trump excepted) have always acknowledged this important tenet upon declaring victory. They immediately embrace the other side and those who voted for the losing candidate. Further, they make an explicit effort to pull those non-supporters back into the dialogue. “Let us start afresh,” Biden said in his 2021 inaugural address. “I will be a president for all Americans. I will fight as hard for those who did not support me as for those who did.”

One of the benefits of this approach to democracy is that it has the potential to lead to robust and durable change. The autocrat’s tool for change (i.e. handing down dictates), far from changing minds, relies on heavy-handed enforcement. But the democratic process of explicitly incorporating disparate views into the development of solutions has greater potential to shift underlying beliefs and opinions, provided it allows honest and nuanced debate in the public square. Furthermore, once such debate does shift underlying beliefs and opinions, any resulting gains tend to be more resilient.

If we firmly believe in the ideal of democracy — a bottom-up government of, by, and for the people — we must shift our mindset away from a paradigm of winners and losers. We must fully embrace democracy in order to overcome the pain and conflict such a system inevitably entails. As Allen reminds us: “One must sign up for the whole package, recognizing that you will have to share decision-making, you won’t win all the time, and you will have to sacrifice but you have to stay in the game.”

Furthermore, fixing our broken democracy must be viewed as a top priority, of higher importance than any other substantive goal, since any specific policy “wins” will not be durable or sustainable without a functional and productive democratic process.

What many Americans — including, apparently, McConnell — need to understand is that democracy isn’t a sports competition, in which the winners douse themselves in Gatorade while the losers traipse to the locker room and make their plan to get ’em next time. It’s a partnership, an understanding that what’s best for the nation is a conversation and cooperative solution space in which everyone has an opportunity to participate. As the past decade so clearly demonstrates, when we start labeling ourselves and our tribes as winners or losers of the political game, we all lose.

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Radwell is the author of “American Schism: How the Two Enlightenments Hold the Secret to Healing our Nation” and serves on the Business Council at Business for America. This is the 11th entry in what was intended to be a 10-part series on the American schism in 2024.

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