Build Consensus Even When It's Hard

If you believe, as I do, that building consensus among competing factions is the only way to tackle the persistent challenges that threaten to hamstring our nation, then you have to be prepared to deal with one hard truth: It's extraordinarily difficult to do.

The diversity of public opinion, the intense partisanship of recent years, media coverage that thrives on division - all this and more makes hammering out agreement on difficult issues seem a Herculean task.

Yet Americans want their elected leaders to work across party lines. Over the past year or so, I've been asked on any number of occasions how two groups on which I served, the 9/11 Commission and the Iraq Study Group, managed to encourage men and women with partisan commitments to produce forward-looking policy ideas on two highly charged issues. We did this in spite of a truly venomous partisan atmosphere in Washington and our keen awareness that powerful interests had much at stake in what we'd end up saying.

Admittedly, both groups were far less complicated than the Congress or a state legislature, where consensus has to be built on scores of issues, not just one. Yet the core principles of consensus-building, I believe, apply no matter how large the body.

Congress certainly understood this in the past. Many times over the years, it has worked in a cooperative way to build consensus behind major legislation. The GI Bill, the Marshall Plan, welfare reform in the 1990s - all took considerable bipartisan legwork to pass. As political scientist Paul Light concluded in his recent book about America's 50 greatest legislative achievements over the past half-century, these accomplishments "reflect a stunning level of bipartisan commitment."

Greatness in policy-making, in other words, requires great effort in consensus-building.

To begin with, it's crucial to work cooperatively, rather than confrontationally. It was clear from the start that in order to do our work well, both the 9/11 Commission and the Iraq Study Group would have to delve into arenas that were politically touchy for the White House. Rather than trying to bludgeon the administration into submitting information we needed, however, we kept lines of communication open and spent many hours in dialogue with them; we understood their concerns for national security and the prerogatives of the presidency, and wanted to make sure they grasped our determination to fulfill our mandates by having access to key officials and documents.

Some of Congress' greatest achievements have unrolled in the same fashion: by members working closely with one another and with the White House to craft legislation that took into account the concerns of all involved.

Our commissions also came to understand something that veteran members of Congress already know: it helps enormously to find informal ways of getting together. This takes an investment of time that lawmakers these days often feel they don't have, yet it pays big dividends. It is pretty hard to get and stay mad at someone when you know them well. Building a rapport allows people to surmount tensions that might otherwise derail them. They let humor defuse sticky arguments, and build a respect for one another that ensures that disagreements will focus on the issues at hand, not on party interests.

These relationships also encourage lawmakers, commission members and any other group of people considering policy options to take the time they need for vigorous debate - in other words, to deliberate carefully and build consensus methodically.

Perhaps the most important step, though, is to focus on facts. The facts of the 9/11 attacks and their aftermath, the facts of what was taking place in Iraq - these were neither ideological nor partisan. By agreeing on what had happened, we could deliberate fruitfully on our recommendations and sidestep arguments about whether the Clinton and Bush administrations had done enough to combat terrorism, or which past U.S. policies deserved support or condemnation. In a city where partisanship is as much part of the atmosphere as nitrogen and oxygen, this was an invigorating move. Focusing on the facts may not guarantee agreement, but it enhances the prospects of reaching agreement.

In the end, building consensus is straightforward. Work cooperatively, not confrontationally. Look at your colleagues as colleagues, not political adversaries. Agree on facts before you apply your ideology to policy. Take ample time to understand different views and deliberate on where you're going. Search for areas of agreement, and do not exaggerate areas of disagreement. Get people focused on the national interest, not on partisan advantage. And decide from the get-go that you're going to reach an agreement, not use disagreement to score political points.

I believe Americans are starved for just this sort of approach. Let us hope that our elected leaders are ready to give it a try.

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The Political Skill We Need Most

In challenging and divided times, it is imperative to find consensus-builders. Americans want results from Washington on the important issues before the country. Making progress on these issues means hammering out solutions that can command broad support, and we need the politicians who can do it.

Our country is closely divided ideologically, with political parties and their adherents ready to scrap over every vote at the polls and every issue that comes before the Congress. Yet if we are to tackle the welter of daunting challenges we face, it will only be because political leaders manage to overcome the forces that divide us. In the current political environment, narrow legislative majorities do not build sustainable policies - solutions that enjoy support among the population at large, and legitimacy among the array of policy-makers who must sign off on them and administrators who must enact them.

Still, as great as the need might be, building consensus on Capitol Hill is about the toughest, most thankless job in politics right now.

To begin with, the sheer number and complexity of the issues we face means that it is hard for any single politician to devote the sustained time and attention it takes to gather facts and opinions about a problem, listen to the concerns of the various interests involved, spend time discoursing with colleagues who have opposing views, work with them to find steps they can agree upon, bring in other politicians and interest groups to form a supportive coalition, and then build majority support in Congress.

Pelted with the Iraq war, concerns about the readiness of the US military, constituents losing their homes, a crisis in financial-industry regulation, failing national infrastructure, a global food crisis, an unsustainable health-care system and a plethora of other issues, lawmakers can barely manage to keep abreast of them all, let alone work to find broad-based solutions.

When they do focus on a particular problem, the politics quickly becomes tangled. Because our country is so diverse in so many different ways, it is rare to find solid majorities in favor of a given approach, either nationally or among a legislator's constituents. For instance, public opinion may support the notion that man-made climate change is real and that governments need to address it, but that's where the agreement ends - and where lawmakers' work begins. Building majority support for an approach to this problem is tough work.

Moreover, public opinion is hardly the only thing a politician needs to keep in mind. Washington is full of skilled and often well-funded lobbyists whose job is to make sure their points of view are vigorously represented at all stages of the legislative process. Because the stakes are so high and so much money is at risk on most issues, legislators often find themselves pulled in half-a-dozen different directions, making consensus even more difficult to forge.

All of this can be overcome, but it takes time, care, and a fundamental willingness on the part of legislative leaders and their followers to achieve it. All of these are in short supply right now. Members' schedules are so full that the chance for thoughtful deliberation is rare; simply put, there's precious little time for the extended conversations and interplay of ideas that produce compromise and agreement.

Nor is there much desire. Years of partisan wrangling and tit-for-tat political maneuvering have left Democrats and Republicans wary of one another, unwilling to share credit, always searching for ways to discredit the other side, and interested more in avoiding blame for problems than in setting aside their disagreements to work together on a solution.

And because conflict is more intriguing than harmony, the media often play up and even exaggerate disagreements, setting up an environment that makes it harder for policy antagonists to bridge their differences.

I don't mean by any of this to imply that building consensus has always been and will always be the appropriate approach to making policy. When I first arrived in Congress, when Lyndon Johnson was President and his Great Society was being formulated, he and his party had the votes in Congress and widespread political backing among voters to enact in a matter of weeks Medicare, federal aid to education and the like. They didn't need to build consensus.

Now, however, we live in vastly different times. Narrow congressional majorities, stark political divisions, the echo-chamber of partisanship, the huge stakes that attend every battle for power - all make it very difficult, if not impossible, to enact responsible and lasting policies by overwhelming the opposition. Building consensus may be difficult, but in today's political environment it is the only realistic course.

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Rebuilding Congress

With their promise of new energy on Capitol Hill, congressional elections are always a time for hope. This year's contests will be especially significant, for Congress is listing and the nation desperately needs it to right itself. No single issue is the problem; it's Congress itself. The people we elect in November to fill the House and Senate chambers next January will need to set about not just doing the people's business, but fixing the institution so that they can do the people's business.

At some level, Americans understand this. The overwhelmingly negative polling numbers that Congress has been putting up recently may be fed in part by issues such as Iraq and the economy, but more generally they reflect widespread disappointment and scanty confidence in the institutions of government. People are discouraged by the lack of progress they see on the big issues we face as a nation. They're tired of excessive partisanship. And they're especially dismayed by political leaders who seem, for whatever reason, unable or unwilling to lead.

Congress is under great stress, then - in its internal dealings, its relations with the executive branch, and its legitimacy in the eyes of the American public. It needs renovating.

Its first charge ought to be to reassert itself as a robust and vigorous institution, comparable in strength and initiative to the President. Our system relies on creative tension between a strong Congress and a strong President for the simple reason that different opinions and approaches, forthrightly stated and creatively resolved, produce the best policy. This is why Congress' willingness to yield war-making authority to the President has not served this country well; issues of life, death and entanglements abroad need thoroughgoing debate, not deference to the President in the name of patriotism.

Similarly, Congress' penchant over the past several years for letting the President largely set the budget has allowed it to sidestep responsibility for laying out and vetting the basic blueprint of government.

Congress has of late made some progress on overseeing the executive branch and holding it more accountable for its actions. This is promising, for oversight is the best means of determining whether federal programs are working as intended or whether there's misconduct on the part of bureaucrats and political appointees.

But Congress needs to get even tougher. Effective oversight is not just a matter of looking at a few programs; it needs to be part and parcel of Congress' activities, especially in the routine reauthorization process that Congress has by and large abandoned. The continuing resolutions and massive "omnibus" spending bills that Congress relies on these days don't offer the chance to probe the nooks and crannies of federal agencies; they allow the executive branch to escape scrutiny, and weaken not just Congress, but the President and the nation.

This is one reason why a return to what Capitol Hill veterans call "the regular order" is crucial - taking up one appropriations bill at a time, holding hearings that investigate issues carefully, letting the diverse voices represented in Congress be heard, allowing full and fair debate on the most controversial issues, and voting on all of the major issues. The traditional, deliberative process may seem plodding, but it is how Congress assures openness and its own legitimacy in the eyes of ordinary Americans - who worry, often rightly, that shortcuts or closed doors hide decisions that wouldn't bear public scrutiny.

To be sure, even an open process can be hijacked by rank partisanship or by members determined to gum it up for their own purposes. There's no easy answer to this. In part, the solution lies with voters, who need to make clear at the ballot box that they value civility and a willingness to work on behalf of common sense and the common good.

In part, it lies with thoroughgoing ethics reform: Congress has made a start over the last year, but too many members still fail to understand how their low institutional standing stems from public mistrust. Congress must insist that all of its members reflect credit on the institution, as the basic code of conduct requires.

In the end, though, perhaps the most important answer lies with a recognition that at this point in our history, with the nation politically divided in the face of fundamental threats to its well-being and its standing in the world, it is the job of the Congress to try to forge consensus and national unity behind solutions to problems.

It showed it could do so with its recent economic stimulus package, although compared with the very tough decisions still facing our national leadership, cutting taxes was relatively easy.

Perhaps, in the end, it won't be able to muster a consensus on Iraq or reshaping financial regulation or combating climate change. Even so, the American people expect it to try, and when they go to the polls this November, that hope will go with them.

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