Destroying what we came for

We diminish the democracy we inherited by refusing to hear what fellow citizens are saying

When did Americans stop listening to each other? Some years ago the retired editor of The New Republic, Gilbert Harrison, met his old friend Sen. Eugene McCarthy on the street in Washington, D.C. “What are you up to, Gene?” “I’m working on a book,” was the senator’s reply. “It’s called ‘Nobody’s Listening’ “

McCarthy had a number of theories about what was causing a crisis of the Republic. He thought we had taken insufficient care of our non-political institutions. He didn’t think “the two-party party system,” was much of a system. He once said that “TV has ruined sports and now is ruining politics.” And he developed these and other ideas in several books.

But the bottom line was that Americans were losing the capacity to listen to each other — to hear, to consider, perhaps to empathize, and to connect.

This was 40 years ago. And this phenomena has only been exacerbated and exaggerated by the internet and social media.

The practical result of this loss of close listening, of course, is that when we disagree, many of our disagreements go ballistic. And worse, when we do have common ground, we just don’t see it. Often we do not want to.

Listening is much on my mind as we head into what I fear will be a partisan mud fight over the nomination of Brett M. Kavanaugh to be an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. Liberals fear the right to abortion is on the line. Conservatives see a chance at Supreme Court dominance — a legacy. And our jurists stick doggedly to the fiction that they have no opinion on Roe V. Wade, though certainly they all do.

It is true that a good judge reads the law instead of creating it in the image of his own biases. But interpretation is inherent is any reading that seeks understanding, whether one is reading James Madison or a sloppily constructed statute whose authors gave no attention at all to the higher law of unintendedconsequences.

Moreover, any judge, like any reader, brings his own point of view, his own personal value system, to interpretation.

Judge Kavanaugh will likely be hailed by conservatives, in their propaganda campaign, as the new Antonin Scalia and by liberals as a modern Toquemada. Or the man who will save Donald Trump. What if we used his confirmation hearings not as a battlefield of stereotypes and slogans, but as a way to explore his jurisprudence — how he thinks and how he may have changed his mind? I really hope his thinking on presidential power and the Fourth Amendment has changed somewhat.

What if we used the hearings as achance to listen?

For the judge seems to me, from what I have read, to be very much his own man — not a cookie-cuttercopy of any previous judge.

Hemay, for example, have been more influenced by his mother, a former prosecutor and trial judge, than Justice Scalia or Justice AnthonyKennedy.

He is also a political animal — more like Earl Warren or William O. Douglas, in this respect, than a Scaliaor a John Paul Stevens.

Finally, it does not take much digging to discover that Judge Kavanaugh is deeply Catholic — profoundly influenced by a Catholic sense of justice and mercy. In a brief but clearly heartfelt commencement address for the Columbus School of Law at the Catholic University of America, he gave graduates three pieces of advice: Love your friends; stay on the “sunrise side of the mountain;” and stay humble. It’s a speech I commend to anyone tryingto get a sense of the man.

The confirmation hearings are a chance to get a sense of his thought — if they are used to listenand not posture and attack. Anotheranecdote: A few weeks ago, I went with a good friend to Detroit to hear a Neil Young concert. One of Mr. Young’s solo concerts is not a rock-and-roll affair but an intimate recital — like being in his livingroom. But only if people listen. The connective tissue in these concerts is a bit of storytelling between songs. But the Detroit crowd, among which there were many feeling no pain at all, was so busy yelling their hero’s name and screaming out song requests that it downed out virtually all of his exposition. They missed what they came for. They destroyed whatthey came for.

So it is with our democracy today. We are missing the chance to hear. To better understand. We aredestroying what we came for.

There are proximate fixes available: Senators could promise to keep open minds on big nominations. (Sen. Bob Casey promised the opposite in the case of Judge Kavanaugh). The Senate could revive the educative public hearing — used so well by William Fulbright on the Foreign Relations Committee in the 1960s and 1970s. Universities could create public space by holding open forums on the great issues and controversies of our time. And journalists could get off the talking heads shows and into the heartland as Bill Moyers and Charles Kuralt did back in the day.

Listening is not rocket science, but it does take intentionality and, as Judge Kavanaugh recommended, humility.