How America Could Resolve Any Issue*

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For every controversy dividing our country, there are representatives who have the knowledge, the tenacity and the standing to find practical solutions—and then win support for those solutions from Americans of all stripes. As you might expect, many people find that claim hard to believe, given the bitter tone of politics in these times. But we have found that there are ways to persuade even the most skeptical Americans that our country could find genuine solutions to even the most divisive issues. One such conversation with a lifelong political activist—a liberal, it turned out—went essentially like this:

“I’ve fought with conservatives over tax reform since my twenties. And every change that I pushed for drove those conservatives nuts. It was as if they came from another planet. Their values were the opposite of mine. We will never agree on how to structure taxes.”

“As a mediator, I’ve seen the fiercest of adversaries negotiate agreements—even on issues as contentious as satisfying America’s need for energy, slowing down global warming. . . ”

“That doesn’t convince me that opposing camps could resolve any issue.”

“But if opposing camps combine their ingenuity, doesn’t it make sense that they can get a better result than if they devote their ingenuity to undercutting one another?”

“If their interests directly clash, I don’t see how they have any basis for an agreement.”

“Okay. I can show you that opponents, no matter how far apart, can find a practical solution to any controversy—if they put their minds to it. But to make that case, I need to start with a conflict that’s less complicated than your thirty-year battle with conservatives.”

“Like what?”

“Any conflict that matters to you, perhaps something from your own life.”

“How about a battle I’m having at home?”

“Sure. That’ll do for a first example.”

“Okay. My wife and I are fighting over where our daughter Leslie will go to college.”

“I’ve witnessed plenty of families go through that. How is it affecting you?”

“As I see it, Leslie should go to our state university. It’s a good school, and we can afford it. Going to a state school didn’t do me any harm.”

“How does your wife feel about it?”

“She sneers at our state university. She wants Leslie to go to Columbia, the highest-rated school that her guidance counselor says she can get into. I’d like to send her, but we’re mortgaged up to our eyeballs. We don’t have the cash. Yet my wife and I earn too much for Leslie to get financial aid. As for student loans, Leslie doesn’t want to bury herself in debt like her folks.”

“Okay. Have you considered other schools?”

“Yeah, but we can’t seem to agree on any.”

“What about Leslie? Where does she want to go?”

“She’s been okay with about half of the colleges we’ve looked at so far. She mainly wants my wife and me to make peace.”

“You can. You’ll see. To start, I’d need you to rate the colleges that you or your wife have considered and that Leslie would accept—say on a scale from 0 to 10?”

“Sure. I could do that.

“Then, I’d need your wife to rate the schools.”

“Okay. I expect she’d play along.”

“Next, we’d need to put those ratings on a chart.”

“I hate those kinds of charts.”

“What if this chart can help solve any conflict you care about?”

“All right. Let’s see it.”

“The chart would start out looking like this":

“What am I looking at?”

“On this grid, your state university is labeled with the letter S. I gather you’d rate it a 10.”

“Given our situation, yes.”

“But if I’m hearing you right, your wife would give it a 0.”

“Or an even a lower number, if you’d let her.”

“Meanwhile, Columbia is labeled C. I assume that would be your wife’s 10.”

“You got that right.”

“For you, though, I’m guessing it’s dead last.”

“Reluctantly.”

“Okay. Name another college you’ve considered, and how you’d rate it.”

“The University of Wisconsin. It beats our state school academically. But to out-of-staters like us, it’s also more expensive. And the travel would cost a lot more. So I’d give it a 5.”

“And your wife?”

“Good as Wisconsin is, it isn’t Ivy League. My guess is she’d give it a 4.”

“So, we could add Wisconsin to the chart this way:”

“I get the idea. It’s not exactly rocket science.”

“Agreed. So we could easily add all the other schools that you and your wife had thought about.”

“And I should care?”

“Well, when all the schools were on the grid, it might end up looking something like this":

“What’s the big deal?”

“The beauty of this chart is that the best outcomes end up on the right-hand boundary. In this case, those points are C, H, M, F and S. They beat all the alternatives.”

“What do you mean they beat all the alternatives?”

“Well, pick any point that isn’t on that boundary.”

“It looks like my top pick among the other choices would be L.”

“Yes, but notice that you’d prefer F over L.”

“I can see that.”

“Your wife would prefer F over L, too.”

“Yeah, I see. So what?”

“If you pick any point off the boundary, you can find some point on it that’s better for both sides.”

“Wait. I see that for both of us, M beats G, W, and D.”

“And for both of you, H beats the three remaining points.”

“Got it. I see that the boundary points are the best outcomes.”

“That’s why the boundary is called the ‘efficient frontier.’”

“Nice concept. It still doesn’t solve my problem. This so-called frontier has five points. How do we decide on one? My wife insists on Columbia. No way that’s going to happen. We’d end up in the poorhouse.”

“I get it. Likewise, when you push for your state university, your wife won’t budge. So what if you considered the midpoint of the frontier, whatever school is represented by M? Of the five frontier points, it’s the one that’s fairest to both of you.”

“Sounds good in theory, but my wife and I haven’t even come close to agreeing.”

“Because in the heat of battle, each of you has pushed your own point of view. You’ve mainly advocated outcomes that favored your own concerns.”

“That’s more or less true.”

“Imagine, though, if you thought of new, more creative ways to get Leslie a quality education. If you put all those outcomes on the chart, it would have a new boundary, a few points better than all the others. The midpoint of that frontier would be better than anything you’ve considered so far.”

“That’s easy to say. But how would we find these ‘more creative,’ more promising possibilities?” “Focus on what your real ‘interests’ are in this situation.”

“What do you mean?”

“You want Leslie to get a good education at a price you can afford, right?”

“Yeah.”

“So do you and your wife spend money on things you’d both be willing to cut back on?”

“We go on vacations to some pretty remote places. My wife gets a big kick out of them, but she cares even more about Leslie’s future. As do I.”

“So if you forgo those trips for a few years, you could afford to send Leslie someplace more expensive than your state university.”

“Yes. But we still couldn’t afford Columbia, which my wife would still insist on.”

“So let’s deal with her concerns. Why, exactly, is your wife so set on Columbia?”

“She says an Ivy League degree will give Leslie the best shot at a great job after college.”

“It would probably help, but it’s not the only way for her to get a good start. What if Leslie worked at a first-class firm during her summer vacations? Wouldn’t that stand out on her résumé even more than an Ivy League degree?”

“Sure. Recruiters care more about real experience than just a sheepskin.”

“So can you help Leslie get a high profile internship?”

“I know some honchos at the big name consulting firms. I could get at least one of them to meet with Leslie. And anyone who did would pick up on how bright she is. I’d bet he’d hire her. Then, she’d wow him. This is a great kid. She’d get amazing evaluations.”

“Perfect. So if you help Leslie line up that kind of internship for this summer, you’d build up her résumé even more than a top college might. Wouldn’t that meet your wife’s main concern?”

“It should. What a relief that would be.”

“So do you see how this situation relates to your battles with conservatives?”

“Not really.”

“The main connection is this: people often wind up far apart because each one clings to a specific ‘position’ without looking for other possibilities. You and your wife, for instance, are stuck because you’re attached to specific schools. To find a solution, you’ll have to put aside the specific outcome—for a while—and instead think about your real ‘interests,’ your main needs and wants. In this case, you’re determined to live within your means, while your wife is focusing on Leslie’s career. As you’ve seen, you can meet both needs. And if you spend more time on it, you’ll think up plenty more ways to do so. Likewise, political opponents usually have many more ways to satisfy their needs than they’ve considered. And they are guaranteed to find more of those ways if they work together than if they fight.”

“Hold on. My wife and I will work things out because we both want what’s best for Leslie. We both want to maintain peace in our family. But how do real enemies find a solution that all sides can accept?”

“In any situation, there’s an efficient frontier. In any conflict, there are deals that will benefit all sides as much as humanly possible—which they can find only if they combine their ingenuity and resources.”

“But political opponents usually have diametrically opposing interests.”

“Much less often than most people think. Give me an example of what you see as directly clashing interests.”

“Well, suppose two nations draw most of their drinking water from the same river. So they fight constantly over who gets how much. One side’s gain would be the other’s loss.”

“Don’t both countries have a mutual interest in keeping the water pure and making it last? Don’t both want to find new supplies? Don’t they both depend on other natural resources that they could develop together?”

“I imagine. But some political adversaries have directly opposing interests.”

“Some people think so—that other cultures, religions or ethnic groups have interests or values diametrically opposed to their own. That’s why ethnic and religious conflicts can be so tough to resolve. The parties often want to annihilate each other.”

“I can name conservatives who want to annihilate liberal organizations I belong to. I feel the same about some right-wing groups. Our goals clash head-on. Our interests directly clash.”

“That’s how it appears. But name an issue where you think your interests are at odds.”

“I believe in helping the poor. Conservatives don’t.”

“Do conservatives want to keep people in poverty?”

“They don’t want to do anything about it.”

“Isn’t it more accurate to say that most people on the right want to reduce poverty but differ with you about the best ways to do it? After all, it was a conservative economist, Milton Friedman, who proposed the negative income tax, paying cash directly to those below the poverty line.”

“Oh yeah, I remember that one. All right, I’ll accept that conservatives would reduce poverty if they could dismantle nearly every government program aimed at reducing it.”

“The way they put it is that they want to eliminate bureaucracy. The truth is that both liberals and conservatives want to reduce poverty, but disagree about what works.”

“Maybe in that case. But look at where the right wing stands on taxes. They want to eliminate the inheritance tax, capital gains taxes, and corporate taxes. Anything to help the rich.”

“The way conservatives frame it is that they want every person or company to reap the fruits of their own success, not be punished with extra taxes.”

“Whatever. I still say that left and right have directly opposing interests on that issue.”

“Don’t liberals and conservatives agree that the current Tax Code is impossible to comprehend, unfair, and a drain on the economy? Don’t both sides want a simpler tax system? Don’t both sides want a Tax Code that promotes economic growth? Don’t left and right both want a tax system that all sides consider fair?”

“In principle, perhaps. But we could never agree on the details.”

“You could never agree if you started with the details.”

"So, where would we start?"

“First off, you would need the right representatives.”

“What does that mean?”

“Let me give you the classic example. Remember when South Africa repealed apartheid?”

“Sure. In the early 1990s. It happened so quickly—after years of bloody stalemate.”

“What made it happen were the two negotiators: F. W. de Klerk and Nelson Mandela, South Africa’s white supremacist prime minister meeting face-to-face with the hero of most black South Africans. Both men knew that if they struck a deal that made sense to them, each one could sell it to his own camp. Which they did. De Klerk persuaded most whites that they had to make peace with the ever more militant black majority. Meanwhile, Mandela convinced most blacks that to gain equality they had to guarantee the then entrenched white minority some power in future governments. Who else could have negotiated a deal that nearly every South African would abide by?”

“I see your point about the right representatives.”

“It’s pretty straightforward. To resolve a tough political conflict, each camp has to have a representative it trusts. Because to accept that a deal with their long-standing enemies is truly fair, people have to believe that their representative is on their side. They have to believe that he or she truly has their interests at heart.”

“Makes sense. So how would that principle apply to fixing the U.S. Tax Code?”

“We’d need to assemble a small group of representatives—maybe fifteen—each of whom had lots of credibility on the subject of taxes. We’d need to pick them in such a way that just about every American who felt strongly about the issue could point to one of the fifteen and say: ‘I trust that person on the subject of taxes. If she backed major changes in the Tax Code, I’d certainly listen to her make her case.’”

“Assembling a group like that sounds like an impossibly tall order.”

“On any issue, there’s a handful of people who have the highest public profile. To find the most efficient ways to clean up the environment, for instance, the Clinton administration enlisted the heads of major environmental groups, the CEOs of six top corporations, and so on.”

“I get the idea. On taxes, who would I trust? Maybe Clinton’s first secretary of labor, Robert Reich, a savvy economist whose politics I like very much. My centrist friends might pick Paul Volcker, the Federal Reserve chairman in both the Carter and Reagan administrations. How’s that for spanning the spectrum? What about conservatives? The ones I know might choose Arthur Laffer, the 'supply side' economist on Reagan’s National Economic Council.”

“Good choices. Plus it would help to include a well known labor union leader, a prominent corporate CEO, and tax experts from think tanks such as the Brookings Institution, the Heritage Foundation, the Progressive Policy Institute, and so on.”

“Okay, I can see how the people we’ve named could sell an agreement to most Americans. But given that they would have such different ideologies and agendas, I don’t see how they could reach agreement on an issue as divisive as taxes.”

“You just admitted that all sides could agree on general objectives: a fairer, simpler, more economically efficient Tax Code.”

“But that’s not enough for them to strike a deal.”

“It’s nowhere near enough. But it is the first step. Next, they’d have to explore alternative ways to structure the tax system and evaluate how each alternative would advance or hinder their broad objectives.”

“You must be kidding. The possibilities are endless. And each option would have more effects than anyone could predict.”

“True. But if the people we’ve named put their minds to it, don’t you think they could come up with more promising alternatives than any camp could on its own? Just consider all the mental energy that liberal and conservative advocates have spent hammering each other on the subject of taxes. Imagine if some of that brain power was put to work looking for the most productive ways to achieve what all sides want.”

“If Reich, Volcker, Laffer, and the rest of them were really committed to it, I suppose they could dream up some good ideas. But each of them would still want a different tax structure.”

“Yes. So each one would have to focus on his or her top priority. They would then need to trade, as in: ‘I’ll accept this proposal that you want most, if you give me that one that I want most.’ With those trades, they could put together a package that all of them could accept.”

“It can’t be that easy.”

“I didn’t say it would be easy. I just say that they could do it. I’ve told you about all the political foes I’ve seen negotiate creative agreements on some very tough issues.”

“But taxes are a far more convoluted subject than most. In any deal on taxes, some groups would lose out.”

“Not if it were done right. A saner Tax Code would save hundreds of billions of dollars a year. Nearly every economist says so. And with that much savings, there must be ways to divvy up the benefits so that just about everyone would come out ahead of where they are now.”

“In theory, perhaps. But you’d never convince everyone that they’d gotten a fair shake.”

“True. There are always some people who feel dissatisfied, some people who feel they should have done better, some people who are sure that they know the one right way to handle an issue and won’t budge from that position. So in any political battle, the best that negotiators can do is to win over the vast majority of people in each camp. But that is doable.”

“The current Tax Code is such a mess that I can accept that there must be ways to make it simpler, economically saner, and fairer for just about everyone. But none of that guarantees it will happen. There must be lots of ways to screw up any negotiation.”

“A few. For one thing, every negotiator is pulled in two directions. Each one wants the most benefits for his or her own side. Yet each one also wants the other parties to contribute their best ideas toward a solution. And to make that happen, a negotiator has to cooperate with his supposed enemies. Nearly every representative struggles to find the right balance between cooperating with his opponents and grabbing all he can for his own camp.”

“How does anyone know what constitutes the right balance?”

“There’s no magic formula. So it’s a good idea for a neutral facilitator to run all the meetings. He or she can then coax anyone who gets too demanding.”

“Say that works. You’re sure that this council of fifteen would strike a deal?”

“No. But I am sure that negotiation is every camp’s best option. I am sure that to get the fairest, most productive Tax Code, all sides would have to work together. What do you think would work better? Your side’s current tactics? If you stick to them, when do you expect to see a Tax Code that serves America’s best interests as you see them?”

“Not in my lifetime.”

“So, would you favor this kind of negotiation, with all sides trying to hash things out face to face?”

“Sure, why not? It sounds more promising than what my liberal friends and I are doing now.”

In roughly the same way, we’ve shown Americans elsewhere on the spectrum that opposing camps can find practical solutions to almost any issue—solutions that all sides would welcome. Finding those solutions just requires assembling the right representatives with the right motivation.

There’s just one problem. For any solution to become law, Congress would have to enact it. But as things now stand, Congress is a black hole into which first-rate solutions disappear, never to see the light of day. Just look at how Congress has ignored proposals from the Council on Sustainable Development, the National Commission on Energy Policy, and so on.

How, then, can America resolve the many controversial issues that threaten to tear our country apart? We will have to motivate our lawmakers to negotiate genuine solution to those issues.

That would, however, require a substantial change in how we elect our lawmakers. (For more information, see The Cure for Our Broken Political Process.)