Dear Senator Romney,
Since I was a freshman at Occidental College in 2006, I’ve followed and admired your political career. Even when I’ve disagreed with you, I’ve always seen you as a fundamentally good and intellectually honest person.
I appreciated in 2016 when you accurately described Trump as “a con man, a fake.”
I admired when you chose to follow your constitutional oath of office over party loyalty and immense electoral pressure by voting to remove Trump from office.
Most recently, I was pleased when you tweeted a statement about the “vile, vituperative, hate-filled” state of our politics, where you urged leaders to “lower the heat.”
Now, we’re entering a new phase where the nation desperately needs you to do more than speak out in opposition. It requires you to reach across the aisle and govern proactively.
Next year brings several continuing critical challenges for our country:
- The COVID-19 pandemic
- A slew of economic challenges related to the pandemic
- The short and long-term effects of climate change
- Racial tension and social unrest
- A changing geopolitical balance as China challenges US global leadership
And we face these problems within an environment of disturbing political gridlock and partisan polarization.
Congress has an 18% approval rating. This fact is not surprising. The body continually cedes its constitutional-right to govern to the Judicial and Executive branches. Its members seem to have few incentives to compromise and govern. Often it feels more like a branch of pundits than legislators.
Now, we likely will face another divided government. Two possible, opposite paths lie before our country:
- The GOP spends at least two, possibly four, years being an obstructionist opposition party with the primary goal of making Joe Biden a one-term president.
- You and a few other pragmatic Republicans find common ground and compromise with the Biden Administration to pass reasonable, solution-oriented legislations to address the biggest problems facing our country.
I believe the country desperately needs your leadership to achieve the second path. Not only will years of obstruction make the problems we face worse as they fester, but also the sad state of our politics that you decry will deepen.
Polarization and gridlock create a downward spiral. Some have called this a doom loop: gridlock leads to less compromise and legislation on significant problems. By not addressing these problems, they tend to get worse, not better. As these problems fester, there is more partisan energy. Hyper-partisan and demagogic leaders whip up this energy at the extremes, further increasing polarization. As polarization gets worse, so does gridlock. And thus, the death-spiral of our democracy continues.
President-Elect Biden has signaled his willingness throughout his career to compromise and make deals. And he’s signaled his desire to do the same as President.
As an admirer and constituent, I ask you to do what you can to work with the Biden administration to find sensible solutions to the big problems facing our county. Take the air out of what’s most bitterly dividing us: climate change, criminal justice and policing, immigration, COVID-19 response, and the economic recovery.
Lastly, given President Trump’s genuinely unprecedented actions attempting to subvert the Democratic congress, I implore you to work with the incoming Biden administration to pass a bipartisan reform of our electoral system. I do not pretend to know precisely what measures this bill should include. Still, the two goals should be clear: (1) make it much harder for an outgoing President to cling to power and subvert rules and (2) bolstering the system against attacks on its legitimacy and credibility.
If you are successful in these efforts — leading bipartisan legislation to make progress on significant problems and securing our electoral system — this will be your political legacy. You will help the country out of a very trying time. And you might even save our democracy.
Sincerely,
Jeff Whitlock