2019_bbm_winter_print copy

About Seniors
Civility: Where Have You Gone?
By Mark D. Olshan
Associate Executive Vice President, B’nai B’rith International
A
few days after the 2016 election,
a young colleague came into my
office, closed the door and asked if
we could talk. He was experiencing a very
uneasy feeling of what we were about to
be living through as a country. He asked,
“How are we going to get through this?
You lived through similar times in the 60s
and 70s. Will we be okay?”
While I shared many of his concerns
on a personal level, I counseled that I felt
the system was much stronger than any
one individual, and that we had learned
what it takes to make things work, even
through difficult times.
Okay, so I was wrong.
We are now experiencing a near total
gridlock on some of the most critically
important issues of our times. So, from
this person’s perspective, the system is
undeniably broken.
In the 1980s Republican President
Ronald Reagan, the great communicator,
with whom I disagreed vehemently
on domestic spending and economic
policies, had a very positive personal
and working relationship with the then
Democratic House Speaker Tip O’Neill.
Together, they created some very popular
and important bipartisan legislation.
There wasn’t the same vitriol permeating
the air that we find in politics today. The
system worked, to a point.
Unfortunately, compromise cannot,
and will not ever happen in today’s
politically toxic climate. This, though,
is not the will of the people: In a recent
Hill-HarrisX poll, an overwhelming
majority of registered voters — 75% of
both political parties sampled — stated
Photo credit: National Archives White House Collection; Identifier: 75853977; Local Identifier: C27608-19
We can work it out ... Then-President Ronald Reagan (left) in the Oval Office with then-
Speaker of the House Tip O'Neill.
categorically that they would prefer their
elected officials reach across the aisle to
find solutions.
Changing the Status Quo
So, what does this mean for the future?
Watching the Democratic presidential
debates, I get the feeling that the candidates
are their own worst enemy. The
country is more divided than it was before
the last election. We have made no investment
in our nation’s infrastructure; the
Affordable Care Act (ACA) is still holding
up but has been significantly weakened
by inaction to improve on it and periodic
attempts to gut it altogether. Too many
candidates are trying to gain traction by
doing everything they can to weaken their
opponents rather than uniting to change
the status quo.
To quote New York Times columnist
Tom Friedman: “Dear Democrats:
This is not complicated! Just nominate
a decent, sane person, one committed
to reunifying the country and creating
more GOOD jobs … And that candidate
can win!”
Even Tom Hayden, radical activist of
the 1960s, learned that you must get into
the political mainstream to effect any real
change. Candidates who embrace policies
that are unpopular with the majority of
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