by Meg Mott, Constitution Wrangler
With an increase in political violence across the nation, one worries what could happen in Vermont. Do our legislators need more security? Are our public officials at risk of attack? The impulse is to focus on safety measures alone. But that strategy doesn’t address the root cause of the problem. Partisan leaders are quick to denounce the violence on the other side while staying quiet when faced with violence from their side. As long as leaders continue to dehumanize their opponents and excuse their allies, political violence will persist.
Support for political violence has recently surged amongst Democrats. A recent op/ed in the New York Times, reported that “40 percent of Democrats supported the use of force to remove Mr. Trump from presidency and about 25 percent of Republicans supported the use of military to stop protests against Trump’s agenda.” Robert Pape, the political scientist at the University of Chicago who conducted the survey, urged leaders to do more. “American political leaders need to cross their political divides and make joint statements (and ideally joint appearances).” It’s not enough to hold your own press conference. You need to hold one with your opponent.
After the shootings in Minnesota, both the Democratic Governor and the Republican President decried the actions of the gunman. Each condemned the use of violence in no uncertain terms. But together they did not stand. Had the Governor and the President stood in front of the same podium and treated each other with basic courtesy, partisans on both sides would have seen that there could be an alternative to violence.
Convincing leaders that it is in everyone’s best interest to share the spotlight is a big ask. Politicians in both parties score big dollars when they denounce their opponent as Marxist or Fascist or some other variant of Evil. “If my opponent wins,” says one side, “you won’t have a country anymore.” “If he gets back in office,” says the other side, “you won’t have a democracy.” If the goal is raking in donations, these are profitable sentences. But if the goal is reducing political violence, those statements are as effective as using a chain saw to slice butter.
The good news is that people don’t actually like violence. Assassinations and kidnapping tend to sour the stomach. Indeed, there have been cases in which a horrific attack was just what it took to get leaders to cross the political divide.
After two women were killed by an assassin at two Boston abortion clinics in 1994, leaders from three pro-choice and three pro-life groups agreed to meet. The mediators set the bar very low: meet four times, in private, with no expectation of resolving the abortion debate. The only goal was to better understand the reasoning of their opponent. Each leader assumed that at the end of the year they would go their separate ways.
But that’s not what happened. Instead, one year turned into five and an entirely new predicament emerged. The longer they met, the harder it became to explain why they were meeting. How could they justify spending so much time talking with their opponents? Didn’t their donors count on them to condemn the other side?
Eventually they issued a joint statement, entitled “Talking with the Enemy,” published in the Boston Globe on the twenty-eighth anniversary of Roe v. Wade. In it they described their initial concerns, their enduring disputes, and the fruits of their conversations.
These clandestine conversations, they explained, “made our thinking sharper and our language more precise.” Through listening and disputing, they became “wiser and more effective leaders.” By avoiding “being overreactive and disparaging to the other side,” they became better at self-control. And most interestingly of all, these deep deliberations did not change anyone’s mind. “While learning to treat each other with dignity and respect, we have all become firmer in our views about abortion.” What changed is how they thought about their opponents.
In the 1990s, leaders could afford to take five years to bridge the political divide. With the current levels of support for political violence, we don’t have that kind of time.
To our Vermont leaders in Washington and Montpelier, if you are concerned about your personal safety, consider making friends with your enemy. Find a topic that you both care about, such as providing for foster children or fighting malaria abroad. Schedule a press conference and let your defenses drop. Laugh with each other as you disagree about policy differences. Let the disagreements be the glue that binds your friendship. Show the world that politicians can have very strong differences about public policy and still treat each other with respect.
Epilogue: After their essay was published in the Globe, the pro-choice and pro-life leaders held a joint press conference. Assuming that only one or two journalists would show up, they were met with a room filled with reporters. The reporters had lots of questions about the process, how they learned to trust one another, and how they dealt with their disagreements. The leaders were honest about their enduring differences and their newfound respect for each other. At the end of the press conference, they received a standing ovation.