Talk About Debt Ceiling Schmeiling

I've adopted Oxford Dean Theodore Zelden's view that for a great conversation to take place, both parties have to enter it with the intent to be changed by it.  When I say that, I'm especially intrigued by the fact that in a great conversation, something new takes shape that did not exist before.  In other words, the parties don't just adopt one party's view over the other, they fashion a new way to look at something, or a new opinion, or a new idea that neither of them had come up with in the first place.

The same thing is true of negotiation.  The best negotiators aren't the ones who cram their position down the other person's throat.  The very best are those who are willing to craft--together with the other side--a position they both can live with.  At it's very best it's not a compromise (where both sides feel they lost something but are willing to live with it), but rather a newly craftier position that makes them both feel they won.

That's what great mediators do for a living: help the parties work together to build something that did not exist before.  That's the gold standard.

What's going on in Washington is a mess.  And it's a mess mostly because one side--the Tea Party-influenced Republican Caucus--has decided that they have no interest in crafting something new.  They simply have decided not to negotiate at all.  It's literally "my way or the highway." 

That's not a conversation.  It's not a negotiation.  And it is surely not a way to show leadership to the people who put them in office.

As David Gergen say, this state of affairs is "announcing to the world that America is in a state of decline."

For shame.