The Constraints of Campaigning--论文代写范文精选

他坚定地支持公众选择,明白对公众妥协的必要性。表达自己的立场,概述了这些承诺准备接受和实施。他宣布,他愿意妥协对实验状态，还假设预计提供的妥协。下面的essay代写范文进行详述。

Abstract
If public-spirited politicians want to make a positive difference by legislating change, why don't they anticipate the compromise problem in their campaigns and educate voters about the need for accommodation? Why do even politicians who claim to favor bipartisanship campaign with an uncompromising mindset? Surely they can foresee that this stance will stiffen the opposition and set up their supporters to resist compromise when it is time to govern.

Consider a politician running for President who declares that one of his priorities is to reform health care. Among other bold initiatives, he promises a "National Health Insurance Exchange to help increase competition by insurers" (which would include the so-called public option). He states his unequivocal opposition to any law that requires everyone to buy health insurance (the individual mandate), an approach favored by his main rival in the primary. He promises that his health care reform "won't add a dime to the deficit and is paid for upfront." Although he presents himself as willing to "reach across the aisle" and look for common ground, he offers no concessions at all during the campaign.17

This portrait is a recognizable likeness of Barack Obama in the campaigns leading up to the election in 2008. But imagine a more compromise-inclined Obama.18 Instead of standing firmly in favor of a public option, this Obama decides to educate the public about the need for compromise. While expressing his own positions, he also states explicitly where he is willing to make concessions and outlines the deals he is prepared to accept. He announces that he is willing to compromise with the opponents of a public option by substituting optional state experiments. Suppose also that he anticipates one of the compromises that later was offered to try to resolve the abortion controversy: he would be willing to give states permission to bar the use of federal subsidies for insurance plans that cover abortion (and require all insurers in states that do not adopt this ban to divide their subsidy money into separate accounts so that only dollars from private premiums can be used to pay for abortions).

It is instructive to consider why no candidate is likely to campaign as this hypothetical Obama does. First, candidates are less effective in mobilizing and inspiring supporters if they talk more about prudent compromises than about their steadfast commitments. Their support and ultimately their success in the campaign depend on reaffirming their uncompromising commitment to core principles, and on distinguishing their positions sharply from those of their opponents. Voters need to see the differences between the candidates as clearly as possible.

Second, signaling a willingness to compromise on specific policies before your opponents offer anything in return is obviously not a strategy designed to achieve the most you can reasonably win in the legislative negotiations to come. This is not only a strategic imperative but also a moral requirement. Candidates have a responsibility to their followers to increase the chances of achieving what they promise. Furthermore, the process of compromise itself, properly conceived, involves mutual sacrifice, which expresses a kind of reciprocity that is absent when candidates make premature concessions.

Third, the terms of complex political compromises typically cannot be predicted in advance of negotiations. Indeed, they should not be: the most successful compromises, like the TRA, often engage the parties in modifying their own views about what is acceptable in the process of crafting the compromise. Even if Obama knew in general terms that he would need to compromise some of his campaign promises in ways that would not sit well with his base, he would have been unwise even privately to try to anticipate the specific concessions that he would be willing to make in order to pass a health care reform bill. No one could have predicted the final shape of the health care reform bill, and few could have predicted some of the issues, like abortion, that would become major sticking points.

A successful campaign strategy thus requires the opposite of a compromising mindset. It favors candidates who stand firmly on their principles, and condemn their opponents' positions at every turn. Candidates may have to modify their positions to reach independents, but that is as far as they can go, and even that gesture toward the center is often suspect in the eyes of their more ardent supporters.

But to govern, elected leaders who want to get anything done have to adopt a compromising mindset. Rather than standing tenaciously on principle, they have to make concessions. Rather than mistrusting and trying to defeat their opponents at every turn, they have to respect their opponents enough to collaborate on legislation. In their acceptance speeches, many elected officials signal their intention to move to a compromising mindset by vowing to be everyone's president--or governor, senator, or representative--and declaring now to be the time for coming together.

The problem for compromise is that the campaign does not end the day after the election; in American democracy it has become in effect permanent.19 This is one reason why so many citizens are rightly skeptical of "coming together" pronouncements. The expectations raised by the previous campaign continue to hang over the business of governing. Even when elected leaders recognize the desirability of compromise, their staunchest supporters still want to hold them to their campaign promises, and believe that they exaggerate the need for concessions. At the same time, as soon as one campaign ends, the preparations for the next one begin. Positions remain rigid and differences sharpen even further, as both sides look toward the next election. Individual egos play a role, too. Politicians who want credit for passing legislation (or credit for stopping it) may refuse to cooperate with their allies (or try to undermine their opponents) when they don't get their way.

The more that campaigning comes to dominate governing in democratic politics, the harder compromise becomes.20 As the mindset useful for campaigning overtakes the mindset needed for governing, leaders--wherever they stand on the political spectrum--are less likely to see, let alone seize, opportunities for desirable compromise. As Obama observed during an exchange with Congressional Republicans at their retreat just ten days after the Massachusetts election: "It's very hard to have the kind of bipartisan work" we need on health care and other problems if the "whole question is structured as a talking point for running a campaign."21

Campaigning in an uncompromising style plays a moral as well as a practical role in democratic politics. It is a necessary element of an electoral system with competitive elections, and therefore a legitimate part of the democratic process. But by making compromise more difficult, it obstructs governing, an equally legitimate and in many ways more central part of the process. That is the internal tension in political compromise: The democratic process requires politicians both to resist compromise and to embrace it. The uncompromising mindset that characterizes campaigning cannot and should not be eliminated from democratic politics, but when it comes to dominate governing, it obstructs the search for desirable compromises. It is like an invasive species that spreads beyond its natural habitat as it roams from the campaign to the government.

The problem is most pronounced in the U.S., where campaigns last longer and terms of many offices are shorter. But it is not entirely absent in any democracy in which the habits of the campaign persist in the routines of government. Several studies of the "Americanization" of campaigns in Europe and other developed democracies have found that, although the character of campaigns varies according to local customs and political culture, nearly all are looking more and more like those in the U.S.22 As this trend continues, many other democracies are likely to confront the challenge of keeping campaigning in its place.（essay代写)

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