I Need All the Friends I Can Get – Camera Obscura
Jonathan Chait comments:
It’s kind of funny how, when it comes to domestic politics, many liberals employ assumptions about human naturethat are wildly at odds with the assumptions they use about human nature when it comes to foreign policy. When you read the liberal blogs on domestic politics, concessions to the enemy are always counterproductive, will must be met with will, etc. When you read them on foreign policy, all those asumptions are flipped on their head. I’m not saying that these two sets of assumptions are completely impossible to reconcile, but it is pretty odd how easily they sit together
This is a phenomenon that absolutely drives me crazy. People who love that Obama is willing to to meet with “the axis of evil” (and scoff at the idea that simply talking to them will offer them credibility) simultaneously live in a state of constant freakout about the possibility that Obama might want to talk to Republicans.
That said, I don’t think the abortion example actually proves this point very well. Because the problem (as Scott Lemieux points out) with concessions there is that they fail to reconcile (and in fact ignore) the actual point of contention – which is either about the desire to regulate women’s bodies or about an absolute commitment to preventing direct assault on fetal life, depending on who you believe (you can guess my opinion). Either way, it’s not really a place where negotiated compromise works. Because that structure requires that people bargain for concessions in good faith.
If concessions on abortion could produce a social consensus for a European-style system where family planning services are widely available (including contraceptives, a social health infrastructure that makes wanted pregnancy easy and unwanted pregnancy less likely, and cheap/easy access to abortion up through 20 weeks or so) but come along with relatively strict restrictions on abortion after 20 weeks, I think a lot more liberals would be willing to get on board. However, there is no reason to think such a compromise is even on the table given the recent Republican freakout about provision of contraceptives (which, BTW reduce unwanted pregnancies – the primary cause of abortion – not to mention the spread of STDs).
Thus, bargaining on this is tantamount to engagement with Iran where they ask us to lift all sanctions, end military aid to Israel, and set up an embassy for Hezbollah in exchange for them promising to not use their nuclear weapons “unless they really want to.”
I’ve gone off on a tangent, but the point remains: it’s worthwhile for people who hate the GOP to consider every once in awhile what it would be like to imagine that your political adversaries are not hell-bent on global destruction but might actually be operating in good faith. That doesn’t mean you have to let them do whatever they want (just as engagement doesn’t mean surrendering core principles) – but it does mean placing some hope in communication.
Or, to put it another way: while not every situation is a prisoner’s dilemma, it remains true that there are often situations where getting everything you want is simply not an option and you’re left with a choice between a bad equilibrium and a good-not-great one. In such cases, it may be worth taking a moment to honestly wonder whether you’re making the best the enemy of the good. And if that requires inculcating a general habit where people start from the principle that dialogue and engagement is a general good, maybe it’s worth it.