The Shift to Respectful Citizen Lobbying

By Stephen Dinan

For many years, I considered myself politically engaged because I would track the evening news and get involved in elections, mainly by backing candidates, throwing fundraisers or writing columns online.

What I recently realized, though, was that I was primarily focused on getting people elected who think like me rather than supporting those who have already won election and are now serving as elected officials, regardless of their party or views.

In a sudden moment of clarity one day, I realized that I was unconsciously feeding the problem rather than the solution.

One of the biggest challenges we now face is a political culture that is built on polarization.  That culture is built and reinforced by the process of running for office.  

The nature of a political election requires that, at the end of the day, there is only one winner.  That means a truly collaborative solution or outcome is not possible.  The tendency, then, is for anyone who wants the job to become increasingly polarized against the other candidates and to build “teams” in the form of political parties that then wage controlled war against the other to gain the prize of the elected position that is the end goal.

Once an electoral outcome is decided, though, a truly healthy democracy would encourage a kind of clearing and release of the patterns generated in the election itself.  It would see a healing of campaign damage and polarizations and a commitment to govern collaboratively.

That’s because effective governance requires a different skillset than running for office and, more importantly, a different culture.

A highly polarized culture in which positions are exaggerated into black or white is actually the opposite of what can lead to healthy compromises and synergistic solutions.  

In fact, it is rare for only one party to carry the full solution to a larger problem in a society; they are usually each carrying part of the equation of a complete solution.

So part of creating a democracy that truly works is to reduce the amount of competitive culture happening between elected officials so that optimal solutions and agreements can be reached.

That means containing the competitive, black-or-white culture of the electoral process so that it doesn’t infect (or overwhelm) the synergistic, shades-of-grey governance culture that we need.

With the injection of increasing amounts of money and longer political seasons, the result has been more and more polarized political parties.  The election culture then begins to infect and overwhelm the governance culture, which becomes increasingly polarized.

That’s because elected officials spend more and more of their time in the election culture with more and more money to reinforce the competitive ethos, which then becomes the norm for ongoing governance.

That’s part of why we start thinking of politics as intrinsically debased because the overall culture becomes all about winning office and less and less about serving the governed.

This isn’t just a systemic problem.  It’s actually one that we are helping to create (or diffuse).  We DO make a difference in how we show up within our democracy and what we are giving our attention towards.

So, when I thought of myself as being engaged in democracy because I was more active in the election cycle (and almost not at all in the governance cycle), I was actually unconscious feeding the problem rather than the solution.

What we should do, as conscious citizens, is put more focus and energy into supporting the governance culture and helping it be as synergistic as possible.  Yes, we can and should be involved in elections but we should do LESS of that than supporting the actual representatives who are in place and helping the wheels of democracy turn as they were meant to turn.

If every week our political representatives heard from concerned constituents about the things that matter to them AND we were reinforcing and rewarding collaborative behavior rather than polarized behavior outside of election cycles, we could help diminish and perhaps eventually wean our governance culture from the destructive polarization fueled by the election process.

This would also help to offset the excessive influence of corporate lobbyists, who are working the levers of power every day with both of our main political parties.

This process of shifting the political culture will, of course, be helped enormously by reducing the sheer amount of money that flows into politics through campaign finance reform and moving towards publicly funded elections.

That would create more containment of the “zero-sum game” of campaigns and lead to less distortion of the “collaborative psychology” of governance that we need for healthy democracy.

And, as concerned citizens, part of the way that we can help make that a reality is to focus more of our energy on supporting and influencing elected officials respectfully, rewarding them with positive editorials and grassroots activities when they act collaboratively, and help them whenever we feel they are doing the right thing.

In other words, if we shift our money, time, and energy towards supporting elected officials instead of just trying to get “our” views and values elected, we each help diminish the competitive culture in politics and shift it towards a collaborative culture.

If we’re a Democrat and have a Republican elected official, we still talk to them and their office staff respectfully and find collaborative common ground wherever we can or respectful influence where we can’t.  

This shifts us from primarily seeing politics through the lens of trying to demand our own view triumphs to a process of working to optimize solutions and approaches among many constituents, viewpoints and philosophies.

This approach applies even in countries with far lesser polarized and dysfunctional political cultures than the United States.  It’s really at the core of making democracy work anywhere.

The ability to take multiple viewpoints is a hallmark of maturity and that is the precise capacity we most need for effective governance.  If we are essentially building a more narcissistic political culture  – “my way or the highway” – we reinforce the singular and polarized viewpoints that lead to the breakdown in public trust.

I’ve recently learned more about this from watching the Friends Committee on National Legislation in action.  They have a strong vision and agenda for peace but they will talk with anyone and work with whomever is in power to advance key pieces of legislation.  

They demonstrate for us that there is always the opportunity to find common ground and work respectfully.  They’ve done this work for 75 years now and are highly respected by both Democrats and Republicans, which has opened the door to a truly supportive and respectful role in the machinery of our national politics.

While FCNL is doing great work to advocate for specific policies and positions, their more general modeling may even be more important.  They show that getting involved in collaborative and respectful citizen lobbying with elected officials is ultimately more effective in creating real change than simply backing another candidate for office who mirrors our views and then disengaging if our view/candidate doesn’t win.

And that is at the heart of real change.

Stephen Dinan is the founder and CEO of The Shift Network.