The Dialogue Venture

Posts Tagged ‘NCDD’

Recently, on the main listserv and Facebook page for NCDD (the National Coalition for Dialogue & Deliberation, of which I’m a board member), we discussed signs of disaffection with the federal government.

There certainly seem to be a lot of them these days.

Part of the discussion centered on Americans Elect. In case you haven’t heard, this group aims to nominate a presidential candidate in a nonpartisan fashion through an online convention in which any registered voter can participate. The successful candidate (with a vice presidential candidate from the other established party) will represent the views of millions as expressed through their participation in an online survey. The goal appears to be a mobilization of the grass roots through the technology that has given everyone a voice.

Americans Elect isn’t the first group to emerge along these lines. No Labels “supports reforms, leaders and legislation that will help fix America’s broken government and break the stranglehold that the extremes currently have on our political process.” The Coffee Party USA is “a grassroots, non-partisan movement that aims to restore the principles and spirit of democracy in America.” (Quotes come from the respective websites.) And in terms of mobilized disaffection, we barely need mention the Occupy movement and the Tea Party.

I see all this as a hopeful sign. Not everyone does, however.

Amid our listserv discussion, someone posted a scathing article on this topic by the distinguished Mark Schmitt in Democracy. He writes that third-party movements and similar organizations are essentially fantasies meant to redirect our anger away from the hard work of reforming the system. The problems with these movements, according to Schmitt, are threefold: they are started not at the grass roots, but by consummate Washington insiders; they promise to break the duopoly of American politics when that duopoly is enshrined in the very structure of our government; and their policies are vague.

Schmitt’s points raise questions that should be asked of these organizations. The duopoly argument, especially, deserves serious consideration. But I wish he had given one other factor its due: the groundswell of public sentiment behind these movements, regardless of their origins. This sentiment is particularly in evidence in the Occupy movement and the Tea Party. Reforming the system, as he mentions, is important—but so is building and channeling sentiment against the inertia and despair into which government gridlock so easily casts us. It may be that these movements are a necessary first step to mobilizing a critical mass for change: the kind of critical mass that is powerful enough to inspire serious reform.

Or perhaps Schmitt is wrong and they’ll spark serious reform by themselves. Think Tahrir Square (though a direct import of that model to the U.S. seems logistically difficult at best).

What do you think of third parties and reform movements? Are they a waste of time, a distraction from real reform, “people’s movements” with real possibilities, or something else?

Is this a teachable moment for dialogue?

A discussion on this topic recently lit up the main listserv of the National Coalition for Dialogue & Deliberation (where I’m a board member). The inspiration for the thread came from a New York Times article about the downgrade of U.S. debt in the wake of congressional gridlock. From the article:

In its announcement Friday night, S.& P. cited the political gridlock in Washington during the debt limit debate as a main reason for its decision. ‘The gulf between the political parties,’ S.& P. said, had reduced its confidence in the government’s ability to manage its finances.

Let’s summarize:

• Congress faces a momentous vote on the federal debt.
• Rather than dialogue, the two parties dig in their heels and refuse to compromise.
• This shakes the world’s confidence in the government’s willingness (not its ability) to make debt payments.
• Finance people hate uncertainty. So…
• Standard & Poor’s downgrades the credit rating, the markets plunge, and millions of people watch their retirement savings shrink.

Granted, the debt downgrade was not the only driver of the markets over the past week. But that doesn’t detract from the larger lesson here: the refusal to dialogue has consequences. At the highest levels of government, it has big consequences.

I’m not advocating that our elected officials adopt a specific dialogue process to solve this particular issue (though they could choose from a wide range of excellent options if they wanted to). Before any discussion of process, I would suggest, is the need to adopt a dialogue mindset: a deliberate turning toward openness, toward setting aside preconceptions long enough to hear others, toward seeking out common ground, toward seeing the humanness in our adversaries, toward speaking from the heart and listening from the heart.

I know this flies in the face of the Washington culture—and, in some places, even aspects of the system. We elect people, after all, partly to represent our interests. Powerful forces exert their power quite effectively, thank you, without any talk of dialogue, and they perhaps are perfectly happy with the system the way it is.

But on a fundamental level, our elected officials are called to get things done.  Refusal to dialogue makes fulfilling this call extremely difficult. In contrast, authentic dialogue can empower them not just to hear one another, but to build on one another’s ideas—so that the solutions they develop may well be far better than the initial positions of the respective sides.

What would it take for Congress to adopt a mindset of dialogue? What do you think?

We had set up the parameters for a robust dialogue. Jane would lay out her view of the issue (the George W. Bush presidency; she was pro). Then I would share my (con) perspective. Neither of us could interrupt the other. There would be plenty of time for thoughtful questions later. We grabbed the Cheez-It® crackers, settled into comfy chairs, and got started.

It went well for a while. I was learning things about the conservative perspective I had never appreciated before. I could see Jane’s point (though I still disagreed with her assessment). This was progress.

Then other people joined us. And the dialogue became something else.

These folks did nothing wrong. They simply weren’t privy to what we were trying to do. So rather than listen in silence, they did what people often do: inject opinions, argue points, present counterarguments. Our dialogue became conversation, in which (according to Robert Apatow) “people express different views on a range of subjects without concern for where the conversation goes.”

So what? Here’s so what: We have deeply ingrained patterns that drive the way we discuss sensitive issues, especially politics. We know how to react with anger, defensiveness, and generalizations about the “other side.” So reacting in another way—especially an “opposite” way that tries to hear and connect with others—requires great care, deliberate planning, and attentive execution. Dialogue facilitators, like those who belong to NCDD, have spent careers doing just that.

In other words: Dialogue must be intentional.

Jane, bless her, was all about being intentional. Soon after the first people drifted in, she explained exactly what we were about and, in the process, invited others into the dialogue. We got back on track. But if she hadn’t intervened, we would have lost the ensuing dialogue and all the lessons held therein.

There’s nothing wrong with conversation. It’s one of life’s great treasures. But it is not dialogue. And we need dialogue in the continuing effort to reach across divides.

What would happen if you could express your opinions directly to federal government agencies—before they make the decisions that affect your life? What if they paid attention?

That’s what the White House is aiming for. Earlier this week, the Obama administration released its Open Government Directive—an initiative to connect federal government agencies more closely with the public they serve. Much of the directive deals with transparency: publishing more data more promptly, creating open-government pages for each agency website, and so forth.

But transparency is only one-third of the equation. The directive also requires the agencies to integrate public participation into their decision making and use multiparty collaboration—with other agencies, nonprofits, even individuals—to pursue their core missions.

According to a White House press release on the website for the National Coalition for Dialogue & Deliberation (of which I’m honored to be a member), “The directive stems largely from the unprecedented Open Government Initiative…in which the Administration reached out directly to the American people for specific policy recommendations.  Thousands of citizens participated in the online forums and offered ideas on how to transform the government into a more transparent, accountable, participatory operation.”

Several nuggets in that last sentence. First, this just might work. Clearly the government modeled public participation in creating the whole Open Government Directive, and thousands of citizens responded. Second, online technology facilitates participation on a level unheard of in previous generations. Third, although agencies have long provided opportunity for public comment on pending regulation, this directive aims at institutionalizing the whole notion of open government—spreading it into every aspect of agency culture.

This is still embryonic, of course, and a ton of questions remain. The directive doesn’t mandate specific steps—simply that agencies create plans for open government. Changing bureaucracies, by its very nature, is arduous and takes time. Some dialogue professionals are underwhelmed with this effort, seeing it as focusing too much on transparency and not enough on participation or collaboration.

But the thought that our government might actually want to dialogue with us is a refreshing change from business as usual. Stay tuned.