The center-right party in Austria has spent the last couple of years doing everything it possibly can to get votes from the far right. They have denied Schengen membership to Romania and Bulgaria and have not been supporting Ukraine with military weapons. They’ve played right into Putin’s hands. Yesterday, the far right still won the most votes and seats. All of that compromise did not save the campaign of ÖVP.
It’s not just in Austria yesterday. It’s across pretty much every election in every country. The most successful parties tend to be the ones who stick by their platform. I wish there would finally be a clenching point where this endless compromise is finally seen as what it is.
We can also look at Chancellor Scholz and President Biden. While I will take them over any conservative, their reluctance to do everything necessary to save Ukrainian lives is not saving their campaigns.
Look at the Liberal Democrats in the UK in 2010. They are closer to Labour on social and economic issues but decided to follow the advice of compromise, make a deal, and coalition with the Conservatives. As a result, they were slaughtered in 2015.
Keir Starmer, the Brexiteer in chief, now has an approval rating of -30. It usually takes leaders years to get to such abysmal approval ratings, but it didn’t even take him a year. He has compromised with the Tories at every opportunity on Brexit. It is not working.
For an American example, President Biden has made the following of compromise as an end to itself the goal of his presidency. If Biden just compromises with Republicans enough, does not make waves, and keeps a steady, even keel, he will be the most popular president in history and be able to finally bring unity to our country. He is wisely working on balancing domestic political with ideological goals regarding the war in Ukraine, attempting to bring all sides together into one great harmony. He will be the greatest president of…
Wait… what do you mean he’s not running? His approval rating has been hovering around 40% for three years? He has worked so hard to bring unity to the American people, yet he is the second least popular president in history, behind only Jimmy Carter. If the goal of compromise is to maintain power, it has been a colossal failure.
He has arguably succeeded at uniting the country. No other president has successfully made over 60% of Americans agree on a president’s job performance for 3 years running. Mission accomplished, I guess…
Bill Clinton also compromised heavily on many issues, including gay marriage, bank reform, and more. While his approval rating was sky-high in 1996, under his presidency, the Democrats lost the House after holding it almost continuously since 1932. He failed to win a majority of the vote in the presidential year. I believe he would have lost if not for Ross Perot.
What if we did the opposite? What if we stood for our values? I cannot guarantee it will always work. LBJ did everything he could to pass civil rights legislation during his presidency, and a lot of voters still made the Vietnam War the reason why they couldn’t vote for Democrats, even though the Republicans also supported the war.
But then there is Franklin Delano Roosevelt. He went full steam ahead and passed policies that pulled us out of the depression and a massive wealth transfer to the Lost Generation in the form of Social Security. He was elected four times, then his vice President, Harry Truman, won yet another election. Except for the Japanese Internment camps, he was a great president on basically every other policy for the people of the time.
Democrats retained control of the House for all but four years between 1932 and 1995.