Let's talk about compromise, both personal
compromise and national compromise.
In a marriage, you have to make compromises.
A friend of mine with a happy marriage said
the best you can hope for in a marriage is
agreement on 80 percent.
If you agree on 80 percent, that's fantastic.
Nobody is ever going to agree on 99 percent.
And so every couple is going to have to compromise
about something.
Maybe they agree about sex, children, and
money, but they got to compromise on the in-laws.
Maybe they agree on in-laws, sex, and money,
but they disagree about what they're going
to have for breakfast.
So you have to have compromise in a marriage.
You also have to have to have compromise in
a country.
It's especially the essence of a democracy.
This is something worth restating for the
United States today because during much of
my lifetime our elected representatives and
our electorates succeeded in reaching compromise
about difficult issues.
But political compromise is sadly breaking
down today.
The most recent congresses in the United States
have passed fewer laws than any Other Congress
in American history.
They cant reach agreement.
In the 1980s President Reagan and the Democratic
House leader, Tip O'Neill — they disagreed
strongly in their politics but they respected
each other and they reached compromises.
And they got big pieces of legislation passed.
The legislation was not exactly what Tip O'Neill
wanted.
It wasn't what Ronald Reagan wanted.
But it was a satisfactory compromise.
And they'd pass some legislation.
Nowadays our Congress is not passing legislation.
Our executive, our president is at loggerheads
with the lower house of Congress.
Within each political party, there are the
radical and the centrist wings.
Our legislature, our executive, our odds with
our judiciary, the legislature of the state
of West Virginia-- don't laugh when I say
this-- but the legislature of West Virginia
has impeached every justice on the Supreme
Court of West Virginia.
Why?
Supposedly because they spend $30,000 to buy
new sofas for their office.
But there are more fundamental things.
There is breakdown of compromise between the
state government and national government.
My state, California, is busy suing the federal
government because the federal government
is busy suing the state of California.
So political compromise is breaking down in
the United States today.
We can discuss the reasons for it.
But to me, that is the most serious problem
United States faces.
It's the only problem that could precipitate
the United States into the end of democracy
and into a dictatorship in the next decade.
The United States is not the first country
in human history to have a breakdown of political
compromise.
Other countries have faced it as well.
An example that I experienced firsthand was
the South American country of Chile, where
I lived in 1967.
Chile has been the most democratic country
in Latin America.
When I moved to Chile in 1967, and my Chilean
friends wanted to explain to the American
visitor what our country is like, my Chilean
friends said we are not like those other Latin
American countries.
We are a democracy.
We know how to govern ourselves.
That was 1967.
But Chile was in the middle of a decline of
political compromise, which exploded in 1973
with a military coupe.
The military government stayed in power for
17 years, smashed world records for sadism
and torture.
And for me and for Chileans and it should
be for Americans, It was a wake up call, because
it shows how a functioning democracy can decay
within a relatively short time into a vicious
dictatorship.
This is the risk that I see for the United
States.
In the United States, if democracy ends with
us, It's not going to be by military coup,
because the American army has never been involved
in politics.
Instead, the decay of democracy in the United
States Will be by what we see going on now,
the restrictions placed on voter registration
where the party in power locally or in a state
prevents citizens likely to vote for the other
party from voting.
It will come about because those citizens
who are registered to vote can't be bothered
to vote.
In the most recent election for mayor of my
city, Los Angeles, Los Angeles is one of the
most important cities in the United States.
And the mayor of Los Angeles' most poor elected
Position in Los Angeles, in our last election
for mayor, 80 percent of Los Angelenos couldn't
be bothered to vote for mayor.
20 percent voted for mayor.
So if we don't like our mayor, it's our fault
for not having voted for our mayor.
Well, what can we do about dealing with our
political compromise?
The first thing you can do is vote.
If you don't like your government, it's your
own fault if you didn't vote.
The second thing we can do is to complain
loudly when you see one party restricting
vote for another party.
And there are other things.
But that will do as a start.
