Hi, Steven. I asked the question about the parallel between the late Roman republic and our own situation. Your response gave me something to think about, and I’m grateful for that. Given its opening statement, though, I think you understand the frustration of feeling like you have offered an open hand, only to have it slapped aside by those across the aisle. How do we move forward? I’m a firm believer in GRRM’s doing what’s right because the choice matters, but practical results also matter.

I think the problem is that we have a political culture that likes the idea of compromise in a rather gauzy, unreflective, moderate-isn’t-an-ideology way, but a political system that functions the complete opposite: Republican control of Congress in the 90s and 2010s was built on relentless opposition to Democratic presidents who were more than eager to do the bipartisan grand bargain thing, and vice-versa Democratic control of Congress in the mid-00s was built on opposition to W. and the war. 

And you can see why – the structure of the government (from federalism to separation of powers to bicameralism to midterm elections and on and on) makes getting things done extremely hard and makes opposition very easy, but our electorate expects the party in party to govern responsibly and political parties to compromise, but votes to punish the party in power (and rewards the opposition) when gridlock happens. 

So one of two things needs to happen to eliminate this frustration: we either need to adopt a system that genuinely allows for majority rule – eliminate the filibuster, abolish or reform the Senate so it’s not so horribly anti-proportional, align elections and voting procedures to provide a clear popular mandate – and then adopt a political culture that holds the majority party responsible for governing and the minority responsible for opposition, or we need to rewrite the system in such a way that both requires and allows for compromise – which would probably look like a highly-proportional parliamentary system with lots of political parties forming governing coalitions.