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William James………………………Teabaggers

Compromise is at the heart of American politics; yield in order to gain.  Politicians and citizens compromise because self-interest demands that they do so.  But at times they also compromise because they come to see the other person’s point of view.  Or as Obama likes to put it, they stand inside the other guy’s shoes.  This doesn’t necessarily mean, as Bill Clinton was so fond of saying, that I feel your pain.  We don’t have to go this far to see the other person’s point of view, although sometimes we might.  We just have to be willing to engage in an imaginative act that allows us to step outside of our comfort zone.  Functioning democracies depend on this ability.  Without it they descend into gridlock, civil strife, and even civil war.

However, sometimes we can’t empathize with others.  Not, for example, because they are hardened criminals whose ways are simply unacceptable, but because the ways in which other people understand and experience the world are beyond our powers of imaginative reconstruction.  Our failure here is not due to a lack of good will.  It relates to a distinction that the philosopher William James makes in his essay, “A Will to Believe,” between two kinds of hypotheses: living and dead.  That the earth is round is a living hypothesis for most every American in 2010.  That the earth is flat is a dead one.   This was not always true.  For much of human history the opposite was the case.  Today there are those for whom God is a living hypothesis, and the Deity is a vital and accepted feature of their experience.  But others, convinced atheists, can make no connection with this hypothesis.  They do not experience God as a living hypothesis and no amount of arguing or cajoling will change their minds.  Agnostics on the other hand experience God as a living hypothesis, but they also experience the notion that there is no God in a similar fashion.  They have what James calls an option: a choice between two living hypothesis, although it is possible that they may never choose.

How then does this relate to Obama and health care?  Obama is a savvy politician, who is both politically and philosophically pragmatic.  This doesn’t mean that he is without values.  It means that he thinks about their realization in terms of what will work.  And this may mean modifying his goals, compromising if necessary on his goals, in order to create some reform.  Obama is also a storyteller, one who understands that storytelling requires being able to see different points of view.  As a storyteller he appreciates the importance of empathy in the go of human life.  It wasn’t accidental that he spoke of it when he nominated Judge Sotomayor.  And he has also spoken about empathy as a lesson that he learned from his mother.  That he can listen and stand inside the other guy’s shoes is one of his strengths as a storyteller and as a politician.  Empathy, no doubt, can be an important tool in a politician’s toolkit.  But it can also be an Achilles heal.

Obama made several tactical judgments on how best to pass health care legislation.  One of them, however, was not actually a tactical judgment, although it could be read this way.  It was actually an assumption.  He believed (at times) that his use of empathy would be reciprocated by the opposition.  Obama has an unusual ability to empathize with others.  It is natural for him to take the perspective of others.  He assumed too much, or had too much faith, in the opposition possessing a comparable skill.  Although he certainly understood that powerful special interests  would be aligned against him, he appears to have forgotten how James’s notion of live and dead hypothesis could come into play.

There are forces out there, forces for whom the idea that the federal government can be a force for good is a dead hypothesis.  The birthers and teabaggers fall into such a camp.  It is not that they merely have firm convictions or values.  It is that the hypothesis that the federal government can be a force for good is simply not a part of their repertoire.  It is a dead hypothesis.  There are Republicans in Congress who believe this.  And there are also Republicans in Congress who need to pretend to believe it so that they can get reelected.   A fatal brew for a reformist president whose natural inclination is to try to compromise with the opposition, and who was once convinced that a cooperative bipartisan approach to health care would carry the day.

So where does this leave Obama?  Of course he knew that his initiatives would give raise to strong opposition.  But there is a difference between strong opposition and folks like the teabaggers.  There will be no compromising with those for whom health care reform is part of the dead hypothesis of “the good federal government.”  Resurrecting the federal government for them is like resurrecting God for the confirmed atheist.   And there will be no compromising with those who have been captured by them or their ilk.  They will hold their ground on every new initiative, and they will carry along the entire GOP, unless the self-interest of (some) Republicans leads the party in another direction.  (Pay attention here to how Brown handles himself in Massachusetts.)

It’s not that Obama doesn’t know this.  Yet he has been hesitant to acknowledge the limits of empathy and compromise, not just intellectually but perhaps more importantly emotionally.   The paradox here is that recognizing the limits of empathy and compromise may very well lead to substantial movement on legislation that Obama supports.  The savvy politician in him knows this.  It’s going to have  to bring the storyteller along, at least for now.  There will always be times for tales.

Most Americans generally shy away from absolutes.  They don’t like to think of themselves as driven by dead hypothesis.  Most Americans are more like agnostics than atheists or the religious when it comes to the federal government, ready to shift one way or the other depending on circumstance.  They will become (temporary) believers if they are given something that they believe will work.  Give them a reason to believe that the federal government can be an active and helpful feature of their lives and they will take it.  Give them a reason to believe the opposite, and they will, at least for the time being.  Regarding health care, Obama’s rhetorical task is clear.  He must help make (temporary) believers of the agnostics with regard to the federal government.

Poor Newt Gingrich–the de facto leader, along with Sarah Palin, of the right wing of the Republican Party–can’t seem to chew gum and walk at the same time.  How do I know this?  Well, he seems to find it impossible to be a loyal citizen of the United States while at the same time recognizing that he is a also member of a wider human community.

Newt appears to be very confused about the idea of world citizenship.   The New York Times reports the following,

Newt Gingrich might not be “a citizen of the world,” as he proudly proclaimed at the G.O.P.’s annual fundraising dinner, going so far as to offer a reverse shout-out to all of the countries he distinctly wouldn’t want to be a citizen of —“North Korea, Zimbabwe, Venezuela, Cuba or Russia.”   June 8, 209, “In Palin’s Shadow, Republicans Collect Cash”

The  idea of being a world citizen is an old one, going back at least to the stoics of Ancient Greece and Rome.  Marcus Aurelius, the emperor of Rome, and a defender of the Roman Empire, didn’t appear to have any problem asserting that one could be both a loyal citizen of a country and a citizen of the world.

“My city and country, so far as I am Antoninus, is Rome, but so far as I am a man, it is the world.”  The Meditations, Book Six, 44.

Newt has a reputation for being one of the intellectuals of the Republican right.  I hope that this proves false for the sake of conservatism in American, for it appears that Newt believes that being a citizen of the world requires him to be a citizen of specific countries, for example, North Korea and Zimbabwe, in addition to the United States.  It’s hard to imagine how anyone with a Ph.D., and Newt has one, least of all a historian, could be so confused about an idea that has been central to Western (and world) civilization for at least two thousand years.  The idea is not that one should be willing to trade one’s nationality for another, but that one should seek to look beyond the borders of one’s nation to a common humanity.  (Was this not Christ’s message?)  We are citizens of nations, but as human beings we share a common humanity.

And it appears that Ronald Reagan had little difficulty understanding and asserting this claim.  He opened a speech to the UN on June 17, 1982, with the following words:

“I speak today as both a citizen of the United States and of the world. I come with the heartfelt wishes of my people for peace, bearing honest proposals and looking for genuine progress.”  The American Presidency Project

Gingrich fallaciously paints everything in black and white terms, either it is this or that, and asserts with absolute certainty that it is one or the other, citizen of the U.S. or of the world.  This is just the kind of ideological mind-set that has proved so devastating in Washington and in the country in the last few decades.  It surfaced in the way in which Gingrich railed against Sotomayor and targeted Obama on the issue of empathy.

“Look, the whole concept that President Obama has talked about — that he worries about empathy. We don’t have the rule of empathy. We have the rule of law.” Media Matters

But as Media Matters points out, Gingrich’s claim is misleading, to say the least.  Obama never suggested replacing law with empathy.  He spoke of his desire to appoint a judge who is empathetic and dedicated to the rule of law.

During the June 4 edition of Fox News’ Hannity, Fox News contributor Newt Gingrich forwarded the false conservative talking point that President Obama said he would seek a justice who shows “empathy” rather than a commitment to follow the law. But Obama actually said his nominee will do both. Gingrich claimed, “Look, the whole concept that President Obama has talked about — that he worries about empathy. We don’t have the rule of empathy. We have the rule of law.” In fact, in Obama’s May 1 statement to which conservatives have repeatedly pointed, immediately after saying, “I view that quality of empathy, of understanding and identifying with people’s hopes and struggles, as an essential ingredient for arriving as just decisions and outcomes,” Obama said he “will seek somebody who is dedicated to the rule of law, who honors our constitutional traditions, who respects the integrity of the judicial process and the appropriate limits of the judicial role.”

There is a connection between Gingrich’s attack on the idea of world citizenship and his attack on empathy that extends beyond his fallacious bifurcations.  One reason that we can be world citizens is because we are capable of being empathetic toward those who may not be members of our own tribe or nation.   Empathy should be understood in two ways. First, there is the sense in which one is empathetic if one can stand in the other guy’s shoes, that is, see the world from alternative perspectives.  Obama often speaks about this “skill.”  Second, empathy can be understood as synonym for compassion.  The ability to stand in the other guy’s shoes doesn’t necessarily lead to compassion, but it does lead to a better understanding of where he or she is coming from.  Our capacity to empathize in both senses of the term is an important factor in our ability to be world citizens.  Gingrich doesn’t want this capacity to be a feature of our judges and, I suggest, he doesn’t want it to be a feature of the way in which we approach other peoples.  If we approach other peoples with empathy, we enter the dangerous territory of world citizenship, which detracts from being an American.  Empathy tears down “natural” boundaries that Newt would prefer to leave intact, and it will turn us into bleeding heart liberals who care more about other folks than members of our own nation.  What nonsense.  When seen in this light, Gingrich’s comments on world citizenship are not merely provincial.  They are xenophobic.  He is waiving the flag in a way that is dangerously close to nationalisms that plagued the twentieth century and gave us two world wars.

If I am wrong about the connection between Gingrich’s distrust of empathy in the courtroom and his anti-cosmopolitanism, then I believe it is Gingrich who must set the record straight.  His words thus far make this a more than reasonable inference.

Thursday, February 12, 2009 was President Lincoln’s 200 birthday.  You might recall that in Lincoln’s second inaugural he spoke the words, “With malice toward none, with charity for all…”   Now charity is not exactly empathy, but they are in the same family of sentiments.

Enter David Vitter.   Lincoln’s 200th birthday found Vitter at a Chinese restaurant in D.C. equating Obama’s call for empathy for the downtrodden with “dictatorship,”  producing one of the great non sequiturs of the last couple of decades.    This is how the story was reported in Mother Jones (which, given Vitter’s record, I am inclined to trust).

Republican Louisiana Sen. David Vitter made a trip to DC’s Chinatown on Thursday to nibble on kung pao chicken and rally the conservative troops. Addressing the DC lawyers chapter of the conservative legal group, the Federalist Society, Vitter got right down to red meat. After quoting comments from President Obama suggesting that he’d like his judicial nominees to be able to empathize with the downtrodden, Vitter declared that demanding empathy in a judge was something you’d expect in a “dictatorship.” How empathy equates with repressive rule, Vitter didn’t really explain, except to say that it had little to do with ensuring checks and balances on an imperial government.

You might think that a senator would have remembered some of Lincoln’s most important words on this day. But not Dave.  Next time a judge is empathetic or shows some mercy, just remember that for Dave we are one step closer to a dictatorship.

But perhaps this is not just about Dave.  Are the Republicans losing it?  I mean, they made Eric Cantor House whip, a man who is certainly in over his head and seems not to worry about prevaricating.