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In an uncivil era, Lugar, Hamilton ask citizens to challenge status quo
With 70 years on Capitol Hill between them, Richard Lugar and Lee Hamilton could have ample reasons to see themselves as the smartest, most accomplished, most important people in any room.
Yet there they both were Thursday, discussing the need for civility in politics and society in various forums on the DePauw University campus deferring to those around them.
Hamilton perhaps best summed up their shared position when he paraphrased the late Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis during an afternoon press conference.
“The most important political office is that of private citizen,” Brandeis said.
More than anything, Lugar and Hamilton left their audience — particularly the students — with a challenge to improve the level of civility in the country.
Lugar opened the comments by seeing the challenges he sees presented by the current president to the three-branch system of government.
“The president has been showing — appealing to his base — that he could essentially change life in the United States — essentially be executive order,” Lugar said. “And we continue to operate by executive order because very little has occurred legislatively.”
The gridlock on Capitol Hill, both men maintained, is a lack of civility and bipartisanship — an inability for Congress to even function within itself, much less with the president.
“The United States of America — the world’s greatest democracy — cannot pass a budget,” an exasperated Hamilton said. “That’s where we are.
“It is an absolute abomination and an outrage that we can’t handle a budget in the United States.”
The very fact that the two men sat together on the same stage, sharing their thoughts on civility, could serve as an example to current lawmakers.
A Republican, Lugar served a state-record six terms as a United States senator from Indiana.
Across the aisle (and in the other chamber) Hamilton, a Democrat, served southern Indiana as a congressman from 1965 through 1999.
Yet the two men — and many colleagues of their era — found a way to make it work, even letting those with a difference of party and opinion change their minds over the years.
Asked about a specific time his mind was changed, Hamilton recalled being approached by a Democratic senator from Georgia (Sam Nunn) and a Republican senator from Indiana (sitting next to him at that moment) about “subsidizing the Soviet Union.”
Hamilton summed up his initial feelings rather colorfully.
“Why would I want to give money to the commies?” he asked.
Yet upon listening to Lugar and and Nunn, Hamilton was won over and eventually supported the Nunn–Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction, a plan to secure and dismantle weapons of mass destruction in former Soviet Union states.
It’s the kind of listening, cooperating and moving forward that both men see in short supply in Washington today on issues such as climate change, immigration and gun control.
Cooperation is also something they see coming under further fire from the influence of special interests and their ability to pump unlimited money into campaign contributions.
“If I announce my intent to run for Congress tonight, one of the first calls I would get, I assure you, is from the NRA,” Hamilton said. “They would come to me and talk to me and they’d want to know where I stand on the Second Amendment. And if my answers accorded with their beliefs, they would write me a handsome check, right now.
“Now, those of you who don’t agree with the NRA would probably be glad to know if I disagree, but I doubt you have that kind of money.”
While the problem is much bigger than the NRA, both men are hopeful that the judiciary will strike down the ability of special interest groups to make unfettered contributions.
“I’m hopeful the Supreme Court will come to a different conclusion,” Lugar said.
Both men are also concerned by the waning power of the traditional media in favor of social media.
Lugar pointed out how news organizations, both major and local, have to be accountable for their stories and can be sued for libelous or untrue stories.
“In the case of social media, there isn’t the same vulnerability,” Lugar said. “Some of the material that appears, it is not really clear who’s responsibility. As a result, there is not the same accountability that has been part of our media structure.”
Hamilton pointed to social media as a potential tool for advancing the truth, yet it has often proven to be the opposite.
“We’ve got to figure out the ways to use social media to advance solutions to problems,” Hamilton said. “You’ve got all of these very tough problems out there and people need more facts, more accuracy.”
Yet for all the power wielded by the president, Congress, the Supreme Court and even the media, both men still believe the ball lies in the court of the private citizen, as Brandeis said a century ago.
And in the citizens — especially the young ones — they still find reason for hope.
“Don’t give up on the system,” Hamilton asked. “It’s worked very well for over 200 years. What’s the alternative? The answer is there isn’t any alternative. We’ve got to make this system work.”
To do so, though, is hard work.
“Democracy is not a final achievement. It’s not a product,” Hamilton said. “It’s a process by which we try to solve the problems that come after us.”
One step is to contact legislators, letting them know where their constituents stand on the issues facing them.
The next step is to vote for or against them based on their positions.
Lugar said he hopes that one thing adding to a push for bipartisanship is the Bipartisan Index, a rating of all senators and members of congress instituted by The Lugar Center.
Legislators who rate highly on the scale have started letting their constituents know.
“It’s begun a discussion of how you might have some bipartisanship,” Lugar said.
As an example, among the senators during the 114th Congress (2015-16), Indiana Sen. Joe Donnelly (D) ranked second only to Maine Republican Susan Collins in the Senat.
Bipartisanship is a challenge. Democracy is a challenge.
Hamilton invoked Abraham Lincoln in asking what he saw as one of the evening’s most important questions.
“Lincoln asked, ‘whether this nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure.’ That speech, as you know, was written and delivered in 1863 and that was the operative question,” Hamilton said.
“I would propose to you that it is still the operative question. It is not written in the stars. It is not carved in Indiana limestone.”
The final challenge falls to the generation currently enrolled at institutions like DePauw.
“Dick and I are here to say that we want your generation to step up,” Hamilton said, “or we’re all in trouble.”