By prioritizing conversation over quarreling, government can start moving again.
Elijah Helton
When I was in high school, I spent every Monday morning at speech-team practice. I was a part of our group improv team. Among three of my friends and me, we were terrible. We didn’t know how to perform together, forcing our individual jokes, and sometimes just ignoring our stage partners. That’s when we learned the First Commandment of Improv, “Yes and.”
Yes-anding is exactly what it sounds like. Instead of shutting down ideas, use each proposal and add to it. Yes-anding can be applied wherever collaboration is needed, specifically politics. Plenty has already been said about political polarization with increasingly less room for compromise in either party. Let’s look two recent examples of how yes-anding can relax white-knuckle grips on party lines.
The Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals deal is “dead” after complications with partisan politics. The basics of the deal, pushed by President Donald Trump, were the extension of the amnesty bill if congressional Democrats were willing get on board with stricter immigration policy for the future, most notably Trump’s famously proposed wall on the Mexican border. While the DACA deal would have been a compromise, it asked too much of the Democrats. The executive branch has already made anti-immigration moves, and most Democrats see the wall as way too outside acceptable compromise.
This two-sided, uncompromising dysfunction is no way to run a country. Instead of pushing party agendas, lawmakers could listen to their constituents. According to a CBS News poll, 87 percent of Americans say DACA recipients should be allowed to stay in the U.S. given requirements such as being a student or employed. Perhaps Republicans could have extended DACA while Democrats endorsed extra border security without endorsing the wall proposal. This wouldn’t be a grand slam for either side, but it would reduce gun violence and start moving the public conversation in a better direction. Yes, we can strengthen our border security, and we can do it while being humane and reasonable.
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The DACA deal looks to be a dud, so let’s see how yes-anding could work for a different hot-button issue. The gun debate has been raging for weeks in the wake of the Parkland shootings, and neither side looks to be willing to talk. I’ve written before about how pro-gun politicians are to blame for the lack of effective legislation on firearms, but the pro-reform side is growing in its lack of cooperation. Gun-control advocate David Hogg has talked about how he hung up on the White House and is now feuding with Fox News host Laura Ingraham. Both sides are at some level of fault, and all of this quarreling distracts from actual reform that has the potential to save lives.
With yes-anding, all voices are included. It’s beyond unlikely that the far left would get its way by repealing the Second Amendment. The same goes for the far right, who want even more reductions in firearm regulations. So what can be done?
Polls have shown widespread support for specific moderate control measures. According to polls from Quinnipiac University, 97 percent of Americans support universal background checks and 83 percent support mandatory waiting periods for gun purchases. Again, these aren’t big wins or losses for either side, but small measures such as this are a good place to start. Yes, we can retain gun ownership, and we can protect American lives.
These compromises aren’t perfect, and I personally don’t agree with everything proposed here, but that’s my point. Both sides of the aisle have to be involved in creating policy. And if we can’t learn to yes-and, no one will be laughing.