The label “art of compromise” and it’s reference to politics. Politics is referred to as the “art of compromise”. It is essential to a democratic society. Elected officials meet in legislative chambers to hammer out policies that all constituents can live with. Successful politicians learn early on the survival value of compromise. Economist Donald Wittman (1995: 154) correctly observes, “That is what good politicians do: create coalitions and find acceptable compromises.” Also political philosopher Jean Bethke Elshtain (1995: 61) states “But compromise is not a mediocre way to do politics; it is an adventure, the only way to do democratic politics.” II. Reasons why compromise is essential.Politicians need to be able to compromise and be good at bargaining with other elected officials. One reason is that in order to get what is important to them, they must be willing to negotiate with others who also want support, it’s is a trade off in that each wants support for the their cause and in turn, must support someone else’s cause as well. They must do this type of bargaining in order to win enough support to get the votes necessary to win for their constituents. If the constituents don’t see that the elected official can bring home the bacon, they won’t vote for them in the next election. In other words, without compromise, nothing will be acheived for the contituency, and as a result the official will not likely continue to hold office for long. By the same token, no politicians or voters, will get everything they want. There must be a majority to implement policy, which means that means that almost every time supporters of policy will have to give up something of value to others in order to win enough support for their cause. This is referred to as “logrolling.” In order to function well, Congress needs members who understand the need for ...
