[House Hearing, 117 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
RETHINKING CONGRESSIONAL CULTURE: LESSONS FROM THE FIELDS OF
ORGANIZATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY AND CONFLICT RESOLUTION
=======================================================================
HEARING
before the
SELECT COMMITTEE ON THE MODERNIZATION OF CONGRESS
of the
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED SEVENTEENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
JUNE 24, 2021
__________
Serial No. 117-08
__________
Printed for the use of the Select Committee on the Modernization of
Congress
[GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Available via http://govinfo.gov
______
U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
48-595 WASHINGTON : 2022
SELECT COMMITTEE ON THE MODERNIZATION OF CONGRESS
DEREK KILMER, Washington, Chair
ZOE LOFGREN, California WILLIAM TIMMONS, South Carolina,
EMANUEL CLEAVER, Missouri Vice Chair
ED PERLMUTTER, Colorado BOB LATTA, Ohio
DEAN PHILLIPS, Minnesota RODNEY DAVIS, Illinois
NIKEMA WILLIAMS, Georgia DAVE JOYCE, Ohio
GUY RESCHENTHALER, Pennsylvania
BETH VAN DUYNE, Texas
COMMITTEE STAFF
Yuri Beckelman, Staff Director
Derek Harley, Republican Staff Director
C O N T E N T S
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OPENING STATEMENTS
Page
Chairman Derek Kilmer
Oral Statement............................................. 1
Vice Chairman William Timmons
Oral Statement............................................. 3
Witnesses
Dr. Kristina Miler, Associate Professor, University of Maryland
Oral Statement............................................. 4
Written Statement.......................................... 7
Dr. Adam Grant, The Saul P. Steinberg Professor of Management,
University of Pennsylvania
Oral Statement............................................. 17
Dr. Bill Doherty, Professor, University of Minnesota
Oral Statement............................................. 19
Written Statement.......................................... 22
Ms. Amanda Ripley, Journalist and Author
Oral Statement............................................. 24
Written Statement.......................................... 26
Discussion....................................................... 32
RETHINKING CONGRESSIONAL CULTURE: LESSONS FROM THE FIELDS OF
ORGANIZATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY AND CONFLICT RESOLUTION
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THURSDAY, JUNE 24, 2021
House of Representatives,
Select Committee on the
Modernization of Congress,
Washington, DC.
The committee met, pursuant to call, at 11:00 a.m., in Room
2118, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Derek Kilmer
[chairman of the committee] presiding.
Present: Representatives Kilmer, Cleaver, Perlmutter,
Phillips, Williams of Georgia, Timmons, Rodney Davis of
Illinois, Latta, Reschenthaler, Van Duyne, and Joyce.
The Chairman. The committee will come to order.
Without objection, the chair is authorized to declare a
recess of the committee at any time, and I now recognize myself
for 5 minutes for an opening statement.
So over the past several months, I have been grappling with
the question of how to effectively chair a bipartisan committee
in an environment that incentivizes partisanship. As we all
know, partisanship isn't new. And when we have engaged in
constructive conflict, it is not necessarily bad, but, today, a
lot of what happens in Congress doesn't feel very constructive.
It feels frustrating at best and maddening at worst. And that
feeling, by the way, is bipartisan. I haven't met anyone who
actually enjoys working in a dysfunctional environment.
So rather than just accept this as the way things are, I
have been thinking a lot about what it would take to make
things better, and spending a lot of time talking to people who
know far more about this stuff than I do. I have talked to
experts in organizational psychology and conflict resolution
and strategic negotiations and cultural change. I have talked
to trauma therapists and marriage counselors and sports coaches
who were tasked with turning losing teams into winning ones.
And my goal has been to learn from people with deep expertise
in working through various forms of dysfunction.
Many of them don't know the inside baseball of Congress,
and, frankly, that has been refreshing too. There has been an
optimism to these conversations that gives me hope.
I went into these discussions looking for solutions and
encountered a common theme in the advice that I was given.
First, define the problem. That is what we tried to do with our
hearing last week. The committee heard from experts who
explained how society has become more polarized and more
distrustful of institutions over the past several decades. In
many ways, Congress reflects these trends, and we talked about
what that means for the institution. The bottom line is that
Members today are often rewarded for hostile rather than
productive behaviors and actions.
All this is to say I don't know that we are dealing with
broken rules and procedures so much as we are dealing with
broken norms. And this is really tricky, because we can't
legislate behavioral change or pass rules saying that Members
have to be nice to each other. So the question, then, becomes
how does Congress change its incentive structure to one that
encourages and maybe even rewards civility and consensus
building.
I want it to be clear that this isn't about trying to
reclaim some version of bipartisanship that supposedly existed
in the past. Congress needs to approach this challenge with a
very clear understanding of the current environment and give
thoughtful consideration to what norms make sense today,
because unless society deems a particular norm desirable, the
pressure to adhere to that norm does not exist.
So, today, we are going to hear from experts who have
dedicated their professional lives to understanding conflict
and to helping people find motivation and meaning in their
careers and personal lives. We know that a lot of Members feel
frustrated in trying to do the jobs they were elected to do. We
also know that the internal mechanisms we have previously
relied upon to help us solve institutional problems aren't
working, so maybe it is time to consider new ideas and fresh
approaches.
Maybe Congress can learn from the techniques used by
experts who work closely with opposing factions on corporate
boards or in foreign governments or in rival gangs and even
within families. So I am really looking forward to this
discussion and to hearing what our witnesses today recommend.
As with our hearing last week, the Select Committee will
once again make use of the committee rules we adopted earlier
this year that give us the flexibility to experiment with how
we structure our hearings. Our goal is to encourage thoughtful
discussion and the civil exchange of ideas and opinions.
So in accordance with clause 2(j) of House rule XI, we will
allow up to 30 minutes of extended questioning per witness and,
without objection, these 2 hours will not be strictly
segregated between the witnesses, which we will allow for up to
2 hours of back and forth exchanges between members and the
witnesses. That is the most formal part of this.
Vice Chair Timmons and I will manage the time to ensure
that every member has equal opportunity to participate. Any
member who wishes to speak should signal their request to me or
Vice Chair Timmons. Additionally, members who wish to claim
their individual 5 minutes to question each witness pursuant to
clause 2(j)(2) of rule XI will be permitted to do so following
the 2 hours of extended questioning.
So, with that, I would like to now invite Vice Chair
Timmons to share some opening remarks.
Mr. Timmons. Good morning. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I just want to first thank you each for taking the time to
come and meet with us and discuss this very important topic. I
believe that this is probably the most important work that this
committee is going to undertake this Congress. We are very
fortunate that we are even here. Obviously, this was originally
a 1-year and then we got an extra year. Now we have got 2 whole
years, and it is great. We are going to make a lot of progress,
and I think this is the area that has the potential for the
greatest impact to fix this dysfunctional institution.
We have talked about it a lot. I have thought about it a
lot over the last 2.5 years, and currently, in my mind, I have
kind of put this conversation of civility into three
categories, and that is incentive structure, time, and
relationship building.
So incentive structure. We have got to facilitate the right
objective, collaboration, policymaking. Right now, the loudest
voice is the one that is heard and it is rewarded, and the
loudest voice is never going to be the one that solves the
problem. So whether that is budget reform, committee structure,
Member empowerment, that is the incentive structure, and that
is an important area.
And then time is another one. In 2019, we were here for 65
full working days, 66 fly in, fly out days. We are never going
to get anything done if we are only here 65 days a year. So
that is another important one.
We have talked about the calendar and the schedule,
deconflicting our days when we are here because, as you can
see, we have 12 members on this committee, and they all want to
be here, but they are all in other subcommittees or full
committees, and we are just constantly pulled in so many
directions. So I think that is an important area. And then
predictability for floor votes. Honestly, just the chaos
surrounding random votes being called and the challenges on the
floor. So that is an area.
And then the last one is building on the first two,
relationship building, bipartisan meeting space. We have got to
facilitate collaboration. So these are the things that we are
thinking about right now, and I would love for you all to build
on that, to add to it, to suggest something totally new. But I
just really appreciate you all taking the time to be here. This
is very important work.
And with that, Mr. Chairman, I yield back. Thank you.
The Chairman. Here we go. So I am now going to invite each
witness to give 5 minutes of oral testimony. Witnesses are
reminded that your written statements will be made part of the
record.
Our first witness today is Kristina Miler. Dr. Miler is an
associate professor in the Department of Government and
Politics at the University of Maryland. Her work focuses on
political representation in the U.S. Congress, especially the
extent to which the interests of unorganized citizens and
organized interests are represented in the lawmaking process.
Her current research examines cooperation and conflict in the
U.S. House through the lens of organizational psychology. She
is the author of ``Poor Representation: Congress and the
Politics of Poverty in the United States,'' and of
``Constituency Representation in Congress: The View from
Capitol Hill.''
STATEMENTS OF DR. KRISTINA MILER, ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR,
UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND; DR. ADAM GRANT, THE SAUL P. STEINBERG
PROFESSOR OF MANAGEMENT, UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA; DR. BILL
DOHERTY, PROFESSOR, UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA; AND MS. AMANDA
RIPLEY, JOURNALIST AND AUTHOR
STATEMENT OF KRISTINA MILER
Dr. Miler, you are now recognized for 5 minutes.
Ms. Miler. All right. Thank you.
Good morning, Chairman Kilmer, Vice Chairman Timmons, and
members of the Select Committee. My name is Kris Miler, and I
am an associate professor of government and politics at the
University of Maryland. And I want to thank you for the
opportunity to speak with you today.
Although I am a political scientist, I believe there are
many important aspects of Congress that benefit from an
interdisciplinary approach, and congressional culture is one
such topic. My testimony will draw upon research I conducted
with colleagues in political science and organizational
psychology where we spoke with 60 Members and staff across both
parties to better understand Congress as a workplace.
Scholars of organizational climate and culture highlight
two key approaches to cooperation and conflict. The first is
called the collaborative conflict culture, where individuals
are encouraged to use dialogue, negotiation, joint problem
solving, and this type of cooperative behavior is rewarded. The
second is called dominating conflict culture, where conflict is
promoted and the merits of winning are publicly emphasized and
rewarded.
In the case of Congress, there is evidence of both cultures
coexisting. When looking at the climate within the parties,
there is an expectation that Members will express their
preferences and differences. There are established norms of how
this is to be done, and there is also a shared commitment to
get to yes. However, when looking at the climate across the two
parties, there is a widespread perception that cooperation is
not valued, and, in fact, on prominent legislation, it is
strongly discouraged.
When party leaders believe an issue has electoral
implications, especially for which party controls the majority,
it is going to be very challenging to change the us versus them
win-or-lose culture. This is not to discourage efforts to make
it less combative but to recognize the political realities.
There is, however, a lot else that Congress does that is
neither internal to parties nor high stakes party votes, and
this is where I think efforts to improve congressional culture
may see the biggest returns. In particular, there are three
areas that warrant further consideration: personal
relationships, shared interests, and committees.
First, to think about the importance of personal
relationships. As the witnesses last week spoke about, there
are numerous reasons why nostalgia and calls to make Congress
more like it used to be are neither realistic nor necessarily
desirable. However, the key is that personal relationships can
reveal common experiences and interests, and that then those
can generate policy conversations and lead to collaborative
proposals.
Recommendations made by this committee have already taken
important steps to promote personal relationship building among
Members, including through bipartisan retreats. Congress can
further ensure that existing events for Members and staff
ranging from codels to orientation and training sessions are
designed to be bipartisan.
Additionally, efforts can be made to increase the groups of
legislators that are brought together in ways to find other
than party. For instance, we might think about holding a
monthly State delegation meeting, or the recommended
cybersecurity training sessions could be arranged by cohort.
Party leaders could also take steps to be more supportive of
collaboration in those smaller and less visible issues. For
instance, the creation of a bipartisan outreach chair within
each party's leadership structure would signal to Members that
even party leaders expect Members to work across the aisle
sometimes.
Shared interests are the second point here. Shared
interests already serve as an important foundation for a lot of
the bipartisan outreach that occurs between Members of
Congress. Sometimes those are personal interests. Sometimes
those are rooted in constituencies.
So, today, I would like to call attention to the existing
framework of congressional Member organizations or caucuses as
an underused venue for promoting a more cooperative climate
across the aisle.
My own research, as well as that of other scholars, shows
more than 400 CMOs in the House, with the vast majority of
those focused by policy issue. Additionally, there are a
growing number of caucuses defined by a moderate approach and
deliberately bipartisan in nature. These groups are an
important tool for identifying who to work with from the other
party.
I encourage Congress to consider not only publicizing
caucuses to the membership as they are notoriously hard to find
a record of, but also increase support in terms of staff and
meeting space.
Another suggestion is simply to give caucuses official
House websites. One might also consider legislative incentives
to promote collaboration, such as giving each caucus one bill
per Congress that would be guaranteed floor consideration.
Finally, I want to talk about the important role of
committees as combining both personal relationships and shared
interests. Committees are where bipartisan relationships often
begin, and legislative collaboration is most frequent with
committee colleagues. However, committees vary in the degree to
which they foster cooperation across the aisle. Some of this
variation is due to policy issue area, but a second important
factor are the committee leaders. Some committee leaders are
seen as setting the tone for bipartisan cooperation. Where
leaders model cooperative behavior, Members are more likely to
perceive that collaboration, and civility are valued by their
leadership.
This committee has already made and put into action a
number of important recommendations. Given the importance of
committee leaders in setting the tone, it may be fruitful to
institute a leadership training session for each pair of
committee leaders at the start of a new Congress to give them
the tools they need to create a cooperative climate in their
committee.
Another suggestion is for committee leaders to more
formally incentivize collaborative behavior among committee
members by considering cooperative behavior when determining
subcommittee positions, the scheduling of hearings, or other
committee decisions. If Members see that collaborative
legislative work gets a leg up, that is indeed a valuable
reward.
In closing, I want to reiterate my appreciation to this
committee for all of the work that you have done and for
continuing to advance this important conversation. Thank you.
[The statement of Ms. Miler follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
The Chairman. Thank you, Dr. Miler.
Our next witness is Adam Grant. Dr. Grant is an
organizational psychologist and a leading expert on how we can
find motivation and meaning and live more generous and creative
lives. He has been recognized as one of the world's 10 most
influential management thinkers and one of Fortune's 40 under
40. Dr. Grant is the author of five books that have been
translated into 35 languages, and also hosts WorkLife, a chart-
topping original podcast which I listen to when I walk to the
Capitol. He has received awards for distinguished scholarly
achievement from the Academy of Management, the American
Psychological Association, and the National Science Foundation,
and has been recognized as one of the world's most cited, most
prolific, and most influential researchers in business and
economics. I believe he also scored a 10 out of 10 from Room
Rater.
So, Dr. Grant, you are now recognized for 5 minutes to
present your testimony.
STATEMENT OF ADAM GRANT
Mr. Grant. Thank you, Chair Kilmer and Vice Chair Timmons,
members of the committee, and staff.
It is a great honor and also a daunting challenge to figure
out how to improve the culture of Congress, and I just want to
start with three points. None of these are going to have
anything to do with incentives, in part because that is not my
expertise as a psychologist, and in part because I think there
are lots of others who can speak to those dynamics.
I want to talk about the norms and the values that Chair
Kilmer referenced earlier. The place I might start as an
outsider to Congress is with onboarding. I know that every
great culture has an onboarding program, and one of the things
that happens during onboarding is stories are told. Culture is
communicated through the stories we tell, but it is also
created through the stories we tell.
There was an experiment done a few years ago where new
hires are given a chance to engage with stories about things
that have happened that make up the culture of the
organization. And if you hear a story about a junior person
doing something that is above and beyond to uphold the values,
that is more likely to prompt you to collaborate and to go
above and beyond to try to support the organization's mission.
And if you hear that same story coming from a senior leader, it
is the people at low levels who don't necessarily have a lot of
power or status living the culture that actually inspires new
members to follow suit.
On the flip side, senior people violating the culture do
the most harm. If I am a brandnew hire to an organization and I
learn about people at the very top who are engaging in
behaviors that in some way conflict with our core values and
our norms, then I am more likely to go and deviate.
So I think it would be interesting to spend some time
pondering, what stories do we tell as people join Congress
about what really happens here, and how do we find the junior
Members who are upholding the values, and make sure that we
don't put too much emphasis on the values violating the senior
people when we set the tone for the culture.
Then I guess the second thing I would think about is
building trust. I believe we get it wrong when we think about
what it takes to build trust. We assume that trust comes from
frequent interaction. My experience and my data tell me that
trust depends more on the intensity of interaction between
people.
If you interact every week for an hour, you can stay at the
surface level. If you spend a whole day together, you end up
going much deeper. You are more likely to become vulnerable.
You are more likely to open up. And that experience of being
vulnerable leads you to decide, okay, I must trust these
people. Otherwise, why in the world did I just share that. And
that is how bonds begin to develop.
A couple of examples. One is there is a camp called Seeds
of Peace, where Israeli and Palestinian teenagers gather
together for the summer. Psychologists have studied what
happens when you get randomly assigned to a bunk or a
discussion group with somebody from the opposite country. And
it turns out that just sharing that deep interaction together
for a short period of time is enough to increase your
likelihood of developing a friendship across that aisle by 11
to 15 times.
Another place where I have seen this intensity dynamic at
play is with astronauts building trust. This is going to sound
like a joke. It is not. I was studying a group of astronauts.
They were an American, an Italian, and a Russian that were
supposed to put their lives in each other's hands on the space
station. And the American and the Russian had grown up in their
respective militaries trained to shoot each other. Not an easy
context to build trust. Might sound a little familiar to some
of you.
One of the ways that NASA prepared them for this experience
was they sent them to get lost for 11 days in the wilderness
together. They had to navigate unexpected turns. They had to
figure out how to survive. And in that process, they suffered
adversity together. They learned that they could count on each
other. And those kinds of deep experiences together are pretty
critical for discovering that you do, in fact, have something
in common.
I don't think all commonalities are created equal. It is
not enough to just know that we are fellow Americans. We
actually need uncommon commonalities. In the case of
astronauts, it was sitting down to tell their origin stories
and talk about the day that they decided they wanted to go to
outer space. After sharing those stories, they realized, I now
have something in common that only a few hundred people in all
of human history can truly understand.
So I think we need that intense interaction to experience
the vulnerability and the rare similarities that allow us to
feel that we can trust each other.
And then the last point I want to make has to do with how
we solve problems. Psychologists have recently documented a
pattern called solution aversion, where if somebody brings you
a solution and you don't like it, your first impulse is to
dismiss or deny the existence of the problem altogether.
My understanding of Congress is that agendas are driven by
solutions, but I think conversations should be guided by
problems. If we start by defining the problem we are trying to
solve, whether or not we agree on how to tackle it, we can
begin building consensus around diagnosing what the critical
issues are that need to be fixed, and so a little bit more
likely that we are on the same page. We also then gain some
practice-building consensus, because we may not always agree on
policies or bills, but we can agree that some of the problems
we are trying to solve are critical and dire for our Nation.
With that, I will cede the floor.
The Chairman. Thank you, Dr. Grant.
Our next witness is William Doherty, a co-founder of Braver
Angels, and the creator of the Braver Angels' workshop approach
to bridging political divides. He is a professor and director
of the Marriage and Family Therapy Program in the Department of
Family Social Science at the University of Minnesota. Dr.
Doherty's areas of interest include democratic community
building with families, citizen healthcare, marriage,
fatherhood, families dealing with chronic illness, and marriage
and couples therapy. He is an academic leader in his field,
author of 12 books, past president of the National Council on
Family Relations, and recipient of the Lifetime Achievement
Award from the American Family Therapy Academy.
Dr. Doherty, you are now recognized for 5 minutes.
STATEMENT OF WILLIAM DOHERTY
Mr. Doherty. Thank you.
I am honored to speak with you. I wear two hats today, one
as the University of Minnesota professor who teaches and
practices marriage and family therapy, and one as co-founder of
the nonprofit Braver Angels, which has done over a thousand
workshops around the country since 2016 to help depolarize reds
and blues, conservatives and liberals, and others.
I have been asked to focus on what we have learned in
Braver Angels that could be helpful to Congress.
We have learned that carefully designed structures for
group process and one-to-one conversations can lower rancor and
produce more understanding across partisan differences. For
example, in our red/blue workshop, we use what is called a
fishbowl activity, where people on one side, reds or blues, sit
in a circle with the other group sitting in an outer circle.
Those in the outer circle just listen and observe. Those in the
middle answer two questions: Why are your side's values and
policies good for the country? And what reservation--what are
your reservations or concerns about your own side? I will
repeat those questions. Why are your side's values and policies
good for the country? And what are your reservations or
concerns about your own side?
Then the two groups shift positions. The outer group moves
to the inner, and the inner to the out. They answer the same
questions.
This is followed by one-to-one and whole group conversation
around these two questions: What did you learn about how the
other side sees themselves? And did you see anything in common?
I will repeat those questions. What did you learn about how the
other side sees themselves? And did you see anything in common?
Activities such as this, which require structured sharing
and encourage careful listening, including showing humility
about one's own side, do yield measurable changes in attitudes
and behaviors, according to an outside academic research study
that followed participants for 6 months.
We have extended this group process to structured one-to-
one conversations between reds and blues, White people and
people of color, rural and urban people, and young and old.
So what are the implications for Congress? Fortunately, we
gained some experience with the elected officials in Minnesota,
Maryland, and New Jersey. In terms of Congress, we did a red/
blue workshop with the Minnesota staff members of
Representative Dean Phillips and Representative Pete Stauber.
And we are piloting new ways to do congressional townhalls and
other conversations with constituents.
Based on this work, I have three recommendations to the
Select Committee for how Congress can foster depolarization.
First, promote Braver Angels red/blue workshops for
congressional staffs and committee staffs. I suggest beginning
with the staffs of members of this Select Committee.
Second, invite Members of Congress to do Braver Angels one-
to-one red/blue conversations. These are private, structured,
two 1-hour self-facilitated conversations where people talk
about things such as what life experiences have influenced
their attitudes and beliefs about public policy and the public
good. We found that question, what life experiences tell us a
story about what you have experienced in your life that have
led you to believe what you believe and to choose what you have
chosen. I was thinking about the astronauts and how many people
in the world who are sitting where you are sitting, and there
are life stories that you can tell one another about how you
got there. Perhaps members of this committee could go first
with these one-to-one conversations.
Third, encourage Members of Congress to adopt new methods
for townhalls and other conversations with groups of
constituents in order to model depolarization back in their
districts. Representative Phillips and I will be piloting one
of these constituent conversations in August with cross-
sections of conservative and liberal constituents in Minnesota,
with the goal of finding common ground on local concerns that
they would like Congress to know about.
If I may be blunt, current congressional townhalls and
similar events are using 19th century designs. It is time for
modernization.
For all of these action steps, Braver Angels has trained,
committed volunteers all over the country to help make them
possible. When we did our first skills workshop with members of
the Minnesota legislature, I asked them why they decided to
participate. The main reason, based on the door knocking they
had done--which, you know, as you know, in local legislatures,
they knock on doors--what they were hearing from constituents
was this: Please stop fighting all the time and get things
done.
And as a citizen participant in one of our red/blue
workshops said, neither side is going to finally vanquish the
other, so we better figure out how to get along and run the
country together.
I will end with my marriage therapy hat on. Like a couple
who remain responsible for their children no matter what
happens to their own relationship, reds and blues cannot simply
walk away from each other. Neither side can divorce and move to
a different country. To paraphrase Benjamin Franklin, it is our
republic, if we can keep it.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
[The statement of Mr. Doherty follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
The Chairman. Sorry. I keep turning off my microphone when
I mean to turn it on.
Thank you, Dr. Doherty.
Our final witness is Amanda Ripley. Ms. Ripley is an
investigative journalist and a best-selling author. Her most
recent book is ``High Conflict: Why We Get Trapped and How We
Get Out.'' I read it on my plane flight here, and it is
terrific. I told her I would be her hype man. In her books and
magazine writing, Ms. Ripley combines storytelling with data to
help illuminate hard problems and solutions. She has also
written about how journalists could do a better job covering
controversy in an age of outrage. Ms. Ripley has spoken at the
Pentagon, the U.S. Senate, the State Department, and the
Department of Homeland Security, as well as conferences on
leadership, conflict resolution, and education.
Ms. Ripley, you are now recognized for 5 minutes.
STATEMENT OF AMANDA RIPLEY
Ms. Ripley. Chair Kilmer, Vice Chair Timmons, and members
of the committee, thank you for the opportunity to testify
today and for holding this hearing at all.
There is a lot about Congress, I should say, that I don't
understand, but I think I may understand the predicament that
you are in, albeit from a slightly different vantage point.
I have been a journalist for two decades, starting at
Congressional Quarterly and moving to Time Magazine, The
Atlantic, and other places. But in recent years, I have had to
admit that something is broken in my profession. The
conventions of journalism are not functioning the way they are
supposed to. Unfortunately, my profession, like yours, is
distrusted by many millions of Americans.
What I have learned is that journalists, like politicians,
are trapped in a special category of conflict called high
conflict. High conflict operates differently from normal
conflict. Arguing the facts doesn't work in high conflict. Our
brains behave differently. We make more mistakes. The us versus
them dynamic takes over, and the conflict takes on a life of
its own.
All of us are susceptible to high conflict. It is very hard
to resist, and any intuitive thing we do to try to end the high
conflict usually makes it worse.
So what does work? For my last book, I spent 4 years
following people who have gotten out of other high conflicts,
in local politics, street gangs, even civil wars, and I am now
convinced that it can be done. I have seen it happen again and
again.
First, before anything else, it helps to just recognize
this distinction. High conflict is the problem, not simply
conflict. We don't need unity or even bipartisanship nearly as
much as we need what might be called good conflict.
In homage to what your late colleague John Lewis called
good trouble, good conflict is necessary. It is stressful and
heated. Anger flares up, but so does curiosity. More questions
get asked. People disagree profoundly without dehumanizing one
another. There is movement that you can actually see in the
data that conflict is going somewhere. And everyone I know who
has experienced good conflict finds it strangely exhilarating.
You feel open, able to be surprised, even as you continue to
fight for what you hold dear.
Second, institutions can cultivate good conflict
systematically. In global conflict zones, one of the most
proven ways to do this is to intentionally spotlight, light up
other group identities outside of the conflict. Often this
means reviving people's identities as citizens or parents or
even sports fans.
In Colombia's civil war, one of the most effective
interventions was a simple public service announcement that
aired during national team soccer games, inviting rebel
fighters to come home and watch the next game with their
families. In the 9 years those ads ran, the messaging led to 10
times the normal number of desertions the day after the game.
So I would urge you to experiment with anything that blurs
the lines between you, including rank choice voting, bipartisan
retreats with family members, other things you have discussed.
High conflict is fueled by conflict entrepreneurs, people who
exploit conflict for their own ends. Good conflict is fueled by
relationships and curiosity.
Another proven way to interrupt high conflict is through
nonaggression pacts, which are sort of like starter peace
treaties. In Chicago today, most gang violence starts on social
media with incendiary posts that lead to acts of revenge. So
organizations like Chicago CRED help rival gang members
negotiate social media rules of engagement, vowing they will
not disrespect or humiliate one another on Facebook, for
example. When those pacts get violated, and they always do,
then there is a process in place to complain and rectify the
situation without escalating the conflict.
Of course, political parties are not gangs, and the
metaphor has its limits, but given that so much political
conflict escalates through social media today, it is worth
considering whether simple rules of engagement could help slow
down high conflict here as well and incentivize good conflict.
Finally, be on the lookout for saturation points. These are
interruptions in high conflict when the losses start to seem
heavier than the gains. Usually it happens after a shock or
some unexpected shift in the dynamics.
With a couple in a custody dispute, a saturation point
might happen if a child gets sick. The priorities can realign.
The identities can shift. With gang members, it might happen
during a snowstorm, which creates a sudden peace. In politics,
it can happen after an electoral loss or a riot. But the
saturation point must be recognized and seized or it will pass.
So prepare now for those moments. It is possible to shift out
of high conflict and into good conflict. Humans have managed
this in much more dangerous conditions than we are currently in
today, but the longer we wait, the harder it will get.
I thank you and the members and staff of the committee for
leaning into these hard conversations and for inviting me to
contribute.
[The statement of Ms. Ripley follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
The Chairman. Thank you, Ms. Ripley.
We are now going to move into Q&A. And for those who
weren't here for our last hearing, the rules of our committee
allow us to be a little flexible about how we approach this,
rather than having each member kind of take 5 minutes and
speechifying.
Our hope was just to pull some of the threads that we heard
today. Vice Chair Timmons and I and the staff identified a few
at least, and there are probably some others that we want to
pull, this notion of how do you change up incentivizes to move
from high conflict to good conflict.
Another thread being sort of a lot of the institution is
designed for conflict. I mean, we are literally separated by an
aisle. Our committees sit, you know, with Democrats on one side
and Republicans on the other. So pulling on that thread. Issues
related to how we have difficult conversations, which I think
came up in a number of your testimonies. And then also, just
figuring out how as an institution we start from a place of
objectivity, right, so that we are engaging more on fact and on
identifying a problem and trying to move forward in finding
solutions, to Dr. Grant's point.
So, with that, I will start by just recognizing myself and
Vice Chair Timmons to begin 2 hours of extended questioning of
the witnesses. Any member who wishes to speak should just
signal their request to either me or Vice Chair Timmons. You
can raise a hand. I think we have a member on remotely as well,
so feel free to use the raise hand function.
I want to just kick things off by trying to get at how we
change up the incentives. So I fully embrace this notion of
there is a difference between good conflict and bad conflict.
And, Ms. Ripley, you mentioned in your book getting stuck in
the tar pits or the tar sands, and I feel like as an
institution, that often happens here.
So how do we instill an approach in Congress that is more
geared towards good conflict when so much of the institution
seems dedicated to high conflict? And how do you change up the
rewards for Members of Congress and for staffs and for
committees? Give us some thoughts about how to change things
up.
And I don't direct this to anyone in particular. Feel free
to chime in if you have got a thought here.
Ms. Ripley. I am just very quickly going to start with the
most--maybe the most obvious reward, which is nonviolence.
Nobody in this institution wants to get hurt or wants their
family to get hurt, I am pretty sure. That is the same
incentive that drives all kinds of people, including gang
members, to take the risk to step out of high conflict. So
that, to me, is a fundamental one that should be fairly obvious
but maybe is worth repeating.
We know from the research that when Members of Congress,
and actually anyone, condemns violence publicly, it reduces
people's support for violence. So your words really matter. And
that would be something to consider if you did so perhaps have
a rules of engagement that you negotiated for social media,
right. So that would be a sort of baseline goal. And reward, I
think, is peace.
The Chairman. You touched in your testimony on this notion
of conflict entrepreneurs, though, right? In this institution--
you know, there are ways to go more viral on social media.
There are ways to get more press attention, and it usually is
not having a collaborative bipartisan conversation. So I am
just trying to think through how to change incentives.
Ms. Miler. I feel like eyes are on me.
So I don't have all the answers on a platter, but I do
think there are perhaps ways. You know, some of this, as has
been talked about before, is bigger than Congress, and that is
really hard, and it may feel like a cop-out to say it. But,
obviously, all of you as Representatives as well as legislators
go back to your constituents and to your districts and feel
incentives and rewards, and, you know, called upon by your
constituents to respond or not respond in certain ways.
And so that is part of the equation that, at least for me,
is beyond my area of expertise as somebody who focuses more on
Congress rather than the national public. But I think it has to
be acknowledged, because that electoral connection, as we call
it in political science, that accountability, that fact that
you are here as the voice of the people who sent you here is
fundamental to all of your relationships, to your job, and to
this workplace.
And so some of what perhaps needs to be talked about
perhaps by others is that dynamic. And I think Dr. Doherty's
comments and his experiences working with citizens and
constituents perhaps is a very important place. Not that I am
shifting the answer to you, but I think you could certainly
speak to that part of it.
In terms of the institution itself, you know, some of it
may be very simple things. You know, I mentioned things like
giving bipartisan caucuses official websites, right. Right now,
it is really hard for your constituents to find out when you
are doing this stuff. There is not an active Twitter account
for all of those situations. Yet individual Members, some of
them with louder voices than others, do have active social
media and websites and so forth.
So some of it may be a series of small steps, none of which
feels like it is going to change the world. But if there are
constituents out there who want to be able to know about this,
when you get positive feedback in your districts about this
type of work that you are doing here, that needs to be
amplified, right. And so how can the institution support you in
amplifying that message? And some of that comes about in
technology, some of it comes in staff or in interns that are
particularly devoted to making this part of the congressional
voice louder than some of the others.
Mr. Doherty. I will take that cue and say that when
constituents want cooperation and not--or want good conflict
and not high conflict, they will ask for it, and many of them
do.
I mentioned in my testimony that when members of the
legislature of Minnesota were door knocking, a number of them
said more than any other issue they heard, and more than taxes
and more than crime, more than anything else they heard was
gridlock, paralysis. And that encouraged them to come to, you
know, a workshop. And then when I returned later--there is a
civility caucus in the Minnesota legislature--a number of
members of the legislature said they had heard from
constituents that they were pleased. Thank you for going to
something. Thank you for being on the Civility Caucus.
So the incentives have to change in lots of directions, and
we have to hold up that larger goal that we are not sending you
to Congress to be a gladiator for a partisan group, that is a
piece of it, but to be a legislator or be a policymaker for
representing all of us. And so that has to change at the
grassroots. We can't just expect you all to do it and then
sacrifice yourselves at the next election.
The Chairman. Dr. Grant, did you want to weigh in on this
before I kick it over to Vice Chair Timmons?
Mr. Grant. I would love to. Thank you, Chair Kilmer.
I wonder about a structural incentive that could be put in
place, which----
The Chairman. Sorry, we lost your audio there for a second.
Mr. Grant. Do you have me now?
The Chairman. We have you now.
Mr. Grant. Okay. Good. Like a bad cell phone commercial.
Here we go.
I think it might be interesting to think about incentives
to seek help. I think we have all had the experience of being
better at resolving other people's conflicts than our own, and
there is a whole psychology to explain why that is. When you
are solving your own problems, you are often stuck in the weeds
and entrenched in your own position. When you look at other
people's problems, you zoom out from a distance, and you are
more likely to see the big picture.
There are professional conflict mediators who could add a
lot of value in Congress. There are independent organizations,
like Crisis Management Initiative, that come in to try to
resolve conflicts between warring factions. And I would say it
would be great to find out more about what kinds of incentives
that you could bring to the table that would encourage people
to pause and say, you know what, we are not qualified or at
least capable right now of stepping out of our own problems to
solve them. We need a third-party mediator to facilitate this
conversation.
The Chairman. Vice Chair Timmons, and then I have got Mr.
Davis on the list.
Mr. Timmons. Sure.
Thank you. That was wonderful testimony. I really
appreciate it.
You know, I keep thinking about this whole concept around,
you know, incentives and relationship building. We have talked
a lot about that through each of your testimony. I really like
Dr. Miler's concept surrounding maybe floor time or hearings
for either a caucus or a bill that has a certain number of
bipartisan sponsors. That is a really good incentive. I don't
know what that number would be, maybe if you get 50 Rs and 50
Ds for a hearing and then, you know, 100 or 130 Rs and 130 Ds
for a guaranteed floor vote, something like that could kind of
push it in the right direction.
And I also really like the idea of--I guess, would you call
them depolarizing exercises? Is that what--what is the actual
title of--what do you call it? Is that it, depolarizing
exercises?
Anything we can do to get people to kind of sit down and
understand what motivates them and build that relationship so
they can have the conversation based off of mutual respect
based on policy, you know, and you agree on the problem. And I
think the biggest challenge is we don't often agree on the
problem, or we talk past each other on the solution, at the
very least.
I am going to have more thoughts later, but I know that
some of the members may have to come and go, so I am going to
stop there and turn it over to other members. But I really
appreciate it. Thank you.
The Chairman. Go ahead, Mr. Davis.
Mr. Davis. Typical. Oh, it is working now. Okay. I just
thought Derek wanted to shut me up, which is the epitome of
bipartisanship, obviously.
Look, this committee, I like to think it is like the
conscience of how do we get to that point of bipartisanship.
How do we get people talking again? And, unfortunately,
Congress isn't made up of the members of this committee. We
have just been selected outside of a small group, and I would
like to think we were probably selected because we are more
bipartisan, because we can understand our differences in our
districts and understand how we can come together.
And I have got to--actually, it pains me sometimes to do
this, but Chairman Kilmer and Vice Chair Timmons, previous Vice
Chair Graves, have done a great job in moving this process
along. But my biggest fear is, as we keep going, that even this
committee will probably become more partisan. And I hope we
strive to make sure that that does not happen. But no one can
control Perlmutter, so, I mean, that is what happens.
I really enjoyed your comments, Ms. Ripley. And, you know,
I look at your opening statement, and everything you mentioned
in high conflict is this institution. But I am thankful too you
recognize it in your profession. You talk about nonaggression
pacts. As somebody who has, you know, won a district that has
been very competitive in every election, I like to think I
represent my constituents, so I believe they want people who
are bipartisan.
But there just seems to be a lot of talk when you get to
Congress about nonaggression pacts, but, you know, politics
decides to get in the way as you are here longer, and then
ambition gets in the way. So those nonaggression pacts seem to
go away, maybe similar to what gang warfare or gang battles are
like and gang nonaggression pacts.
You know, there is a lot of talk about social media too.
And this is why I want to start with you, Ms. Ripley. It was
recently this week I saw a study about Twitter that went and
looked at all of the Twitter users and put it into a political
perspective, and said that Twitter users would make up the
second most Democratic district in the Nation if you put them
together as constituencies.
So I can tell you as somebody who gets asked a lot of
questions by journalists back home especially, I think they put
an overreliance on social media and the five people who may be
on social media all the time criticizing any one Member of
Congress so that we then have to answer those questions. What
can we do to help educate your profession on how partisan some
of the techniques the journalists use may be damaging the
fabric of this institution?
Ms. Ripley. I am glad that you asked, because I do think
part of creating new incentives has to involve the news media,
right. Like, that is part of what is driving these incentives.
I often think that there should be a warning that pops up when
journalists open Twitter that says 8 out of 10 Americans do not
use this service, just as a reminder. It is like cigarettes,
you know, and just because it does really work.
And just basic human psychology is you--it is not designed
for us to calibrate those messages. The ones that are negative
are searing, right, and so you get very sensitive to being
attacked on Twitter. And there are--you know, there are
conservatives on Twitter as well.
Mr. Davis. Oh, absolutely.
Ms. Ripley. But, in any case, there is only--like, very
active is left and very active is right is like 20 percent of
the country, but they are more than twice as likely to post
about politics on social media, so you get this really
distorted view. And, again, it is just not human-sized. Like,
we can't calibrate it.
So I think there are some people working on sort of
overlays for Twitter, which I am--I have beta tested a couple
and I am very excited about, but I would encourage more of that
to help us see. Like, there is one that puts a little--just a
label. And, again, you opt into it. It is not Twitter doing it.
It is like a label that says, you know, this is probably a bot,
or it says, this person posts extreme content that is not
representative of--whatever you want. You can come up with any
algorithm you want. It is not going to be perfect, but it helps
us--I found when I used it, I immediately was able to let
things roll that I might not have otherwise.
So there are some--you know, Dr. Grant can maybe speak more
to this, right, but there are some basic ways we know that
are--the way we process information has almost nothing to do
with the way it is displayed to us as journalists and also
politicians. So there are better ways to collect feedback than
Twitter for sure, and I think that the news media needs to get
more creative. And it is hard to generalize about the news
media, but get more creative about covering political conflict.
Mr. Davis. I have opened this up. I am not going to ask
another question, so if anybody else wants to answer or respond
to this.
The Chairman. Dr. Grant, go ahead.
Mr. Grant. I will just build on Ms. Ripley's comments. I
think the Duke Polarization Lab has done particularly
interesting work here, where they will offer you a Twitter
filter that tells you how partisan and ideological your posts
are. They give you a probability that you are being trolled.
They show you a bipartisanship leader board. They give you the
bot signal as well. And I think maybe most important for
Congress, they give you feedback about whether you are in an
echo chamber, based on who you follow and who you tend to
engage with.
And I think we need that kind of calibration to figure out,
am I listening to a representative group of people or am I
falling victim to what most of us are, which is empirically, 10
percent of Twitter users drive 97 percent of the tweets that
reference national politics. And so I think we need to balance
that out.
Mr. Davis. Speaking of balance, I mean, I think there is
some concern on how that balance on social media across all
platforms is. And I certainly hope we can continue to work
together, because I think what discussion all of you bring up
is very important to us in fixing this place, and that is all
of us around this table. That is our goal.
And, thank you, Mr. Chair. I appreciate it. I will yield
back.
Mr. Doherty. Could I add something, Congressman Davis?
Mr. Davis. Go ahead.
Mr. Doherty. One of my themes here is going to be it has
got to also be at the grassroots, and so we as a people are
just learning how to use social media to try to----
The Chairman. Is your mike on?
Mr. Doherty. Pardon me?
The Chairman. Is your mike on?
Mr. Doherty. Yeah.
The Chairman. Okay.
Mr. Doherty. Yeah. As a people, we are just learning to use
this tool. And so not just the vertical stuff of people to you,
but we need to learn together. And I will just mention that the
newest workshop Braver Angels is coming out with soon is on
depolarizing our social media relationships with one another.
Because you know the people that are going after you are going
after their family members and their friends, so it is got to
be at that level as well.
Thank you.
Ms. Miler. May I add one last bit?
The Chairman. Yeah, go ahead.
Ms. Miler. Is the mike--we are okay?
I think one--two points that I just wanted to build upon
the comments that the other panelists have mentioned. So one is
that these facts about the distortion on Twitter, those should
be part of freshmen orientation, right, in sessions about how
to handle social media in your office and training your staff.
Let's bring in some of that information perhaps, because when
we all sit here and hear that, if we are not the ones familiar
with the statistics, you go, whoa, really, 90 percent and 10
percent, huh, that is striking. And maybe those are just small
pieces of information along the way to have a 20-minute session
as part of orientation that talks about this distorting view
that can occur.
And, again, I do recognize I am stepping outside of my
expertise by speaking to social media, but perhaps that is one
thing.
I think the only other comment that I would make is that
Members of Congress are incentivized through elections, not
through social media. And so the reason that social media
becomes so large is because of the belief that it affects
representation and it affects elections. And so I think keeping
that as part of the conversation as we talk about social media,
obviously, it is not going away, and so it continues to be an
important part of communication both for you out to your
constituents and for constituents to you. But I think there
would be fairly widespread consensus that it is not the ideal
relationship to have with your constituents, right, is talking
through social media.
And so to think about how to balance that and to the extent
that it matters, it is because it matters in some ways going
back to incentives, as the chair and the vice chair have both
mentioned, right. It is the electoral incentives that occurs
there, and to think about other ways to maybe buttress social
media so that it doesn't feel so much bigger than everything
else.
The Chairman. Anyone else want to pull on this thread
before we----
Go ahead. It is just really hard to see whether the
microphones are on or off, so apologies.
Ms. Van Duyne. I appreciate what you are saying, bringing
into the conversation elections and campaigns. I think that
does tend to prioritize a lot of the agendas and conversations
while we are here, because while it is great to have
conversations about how to deescalate and work together, the
fact is, is that every 2 years, it is very tribal, and it is
one side against another side, and it is very--it is a team.
You know, Mayor Cleaver, you know, we were both mayors. And
I don't know, but in my case, it was nonpartisan. You know, you
didn't have an R or a D next to your name. And the discussions
that we had had to do--they focused purely on the policy
decisions that you were making. They tended to be much more
clear, much more thoughtful. Not that we didn't have
disagreements, but once you put an R or a D next to your name,
good Lord.
I mean, the people who were following me on social media,
never met before, never had I represented, never really had
even seen me in a meeting. But all of a sudden, they had these
very strong ideas of what I stood for and what I didn't do, and
that plays into it.
And I don't know how you overcome the every 2-year fight,
because, you know, look, I am a freshman. I am completely
novice at this. I have done it on a local basis. But there was
a good friend of mine who was mayor of St. Louis, and he had
said, the longer you are in politics, the harder it is because,
you know, supporters come and go, enemies accumulate. And I
would say the same thing. When I decided to run in a partisan
seat, I got all of the Republicans' enemies, not just, you
know, mine.
How do you see us being able to overcome and have
conversations at policy levels where you are keeping the
campaigns where the parties get so intricately involved? How do
you keep that out and separate? And if you can answer this
question, you know, I will be the first to pay.
Ms. Miler. I feel an obligation that somebody has to turn
on the mike here.
So I wish I had the perfect answer and we could make this,
you know, barter here, but I think you have really hit on
something. It is really difficult. And I think in part it goes
to a larger challenge in that all of you have multiple aspects
of your jobs. You are legislators, which is what we are trying
to, in large part, talk about here. How do we engage in better
policy conversation and legislating. You are Representatives.
You have to go back. You are campaigners all the time. And, you
know, short of turning 2 years into a longer term, which I am
not necessarily sure, A, will ever happen, or, B, would really
solve the problems that you are talking about, there is a real
challenge in that distinction between your legislative hat and
your electoral hats. And I think that does have to be
recognized in the role of the parties, and the national parties
have good and bad to them.
You know, there is a lot of ways in which scholars find
that they mobilize voters, they bring people into politics and
good things, but what you describe is the other hand of that.
And so I am going to a little bit punt here and say, again,
right, the issue of the constituency and how to shape how
voters see and perceive the information they get through the
media, the way that they are able to process it, you know, the
parties are going to be involved in elections. And the
challenge is are there elements that can be made attractive or
the ways in which cooperation, compromise, bipartisanship,
reasonableness can be brought to the front in an election.
And so when we hear, as we have here, that constituents
want bipartisanship, that they want things to be done, how do
we elevate that above the partisan rhetoric that occurs in the
election. And I will also pay for anybody who has the answer.
The Chairman. I saw Mr. Latta and then Mr. Cleaver. At some
point, I do want us to dive into that topic, right, so this
whole question of--you know, even the work that Braver Angels
does, I am not surprised that Dean Phillips participated in
that. He is someone deeply invested in fostering those sorts of
bipartisan relationships.
I think the trickier question for us is, as an institution,
how do we encourage those difficult conversations? How do we
encourage that sort of trust building? And I think that may be
a thread that Mr. Latta was going to pull on, but----
[Inaudible.]
The Chairman. That is all right. We are just talking. Go
ahead. And then Mr. Cleaver and then Mr. Perlmutter.
There we go.
Mr. Latta. All right. There we go.
I serve on the Energy and Commerce Committee. I am the
ranker on telecommunications, and a lot of times our mikes
don't work.
But, first, thanks for being with us today. I appreciate
all your comments and the discussion today.
And, you know, we are in a very interesting time in this
country, and I think that we have heard from the members about,
especially what you have also brought up about social media.
You know, it is interesting, you are back home, and people will
bring up a topic, and I will say, just out of curiosity, did
you get that off the internet? And they will say yes. And I
will say, you know, every so often, everything that is on the
internet is not true. And they say, yes, it is because you
can't put anything on the internet that is not true. And you
see members shaking their heads here because we hear that.
So a lot of things are out there, but, you know--and I know
in my years, not only here but also in the Ohio legislature, in
the senate and the house, I live kind in life of C's, from
civility, collegiality, collaboration, cooperation, camaraderie
out there. And it is also difficult because, again, you know,
it has been brought up about how people back home, when we hear
this, that they would like, you know, bipartisanship and things
like that, and I will start asking questions as to what, and
they say, I don't agree with any of that. I say, well, what--
tell me--when you want me to start agreeing, just start saying
it, and you will go through it.
So it is difficult, because, again, we have changed in how
people are getting their news and everything else in this
country. Pardon me.
So, you know, it puts us in an interesting time. But, you
know, one of the things I know that we were talking about too
is about what do we do with our staffs and it is time. You
know, we were in an 8.5 hour markup yesterday, so pretty much I
sat across the hallway in the Energy and Commerce Committee
markup, and to get us to be in the same spot at the same time
is very, very difficult. I will tell people, if you are going
to get members in, you better get it done in 15 minutes because
we are going to start losing people.
But, you know, how do we--you know, again, with our staffs
too looking at having, you know, the depolarizing workshops and
one-on-one facilitated, how do we get people there? Because,
again, time around here is our biggest enemy. I mean, you know,
a lot of us, short days are what we consider maybe a 12-hour,
and a natural day might be 13, 14, 15 hours when you are here,
and then you go back to your districts, and you are in the car.
So, you know, how do we get folks together? And my first
question is, you know, just on how do we get people, from
Members to staff, to be able to get to these and to see the
significance in what we need to do. You know, it is when it is
mandated, we have certain things we have to do that are
mandated. It is like, if you don't get it done, then you are in
trouble, if you don't take this one thing once or twice a year,
and our staff says you have got to do this. But, you know,
maybe this across to all of you, but I just ask that question.
Mr. Doherty. Well, what I would say, Congressman, is some
of the things that I am talking about could be done between
sessions. You know, you are not here all the time. We can also
use Zoom. When we did Congressman Stauber and Congressman
Phillips' staffs, we did it between sessions when they had a
day. As Dr. Grant said, when they have a day, then you can do a
deep dive.
So I wouldn't try to do it--I can see what you are all
doing now. I see you are running around, and that would be--I
don't see that perhaps as workable. But there are perhaps other
times in the year when you have a little more downtime. Just a
thought.
And the thing about the one-to-ones that I suggested that
Members of Congress do, it is two one-hours. Your staffs can
schedule two one-hours at some point. And if you can't do it
now, you could do it on Zoom in between sessions. My advice.
Mr. Latta. Anybody else like to answer on that?
Mr. Grant. Well, I will just add something that might be
interesting for the in-between time, which is--I know that this
is a swear word in some parts of government, but performance
management. Where is that for Congress? Who sits you down twice
a year and lets you know, these are the things that you did
well that made Congress work better, and here are the ways that
you undermined our collective mission and hurt our country.
I wonder if you could take some of the time when you are
not in session and identify a group of ideally bipartisans who
are respected across parties who could be tasked with doing
that independent feedback and trying to hold people accountable
a little bit for the contributions they make as well as for
what they subtract.
The Chairman. Can you say more? What would that look like?
Can you put a little bit more meat on that bone?
Mr. Grant. Yeah, so I guess the starting point for me would
be to say, let's take a group--let's do a survey of all 435
Members of Congress, and let's find out who are the most
respected Members across parties. Ideally, we find out who is
trusted by the opposite party. Then we get a group of, let's
say, five to seven of those people. And they are tasked with
doing a review of each Member of Congress. Their performance,
their behavior on social media, and trying to evaluate whether
the behavior either lives up to or violates the values and
norms that you have set forth.
And I don't think that that feedback is always as powerful
as an incentive. But we do have pretty extensive evidence that
when you are given feedback by people who are in positions of
power who you trust, respect, or look up to, that does move
your behavior. It is something that you pay attention to. And I
think it is at least an experiment I would be very curious to
run.
The Chairman. So I want to kick it over to Mr. Cleaver, but
I will mention, I shared that I have also been talking to
sports coaches and, you know, all starts of folks just trying
to get my head around this. Interestingly enough, one of the
sports coaches I talked to, he was talking about how he turned
around his team. One, Dr. Grant, you said it was all about on-
boarding the freshman. That was how they set culture and
changed the culture of the team. But, two, he said we had--
well, you just described was how he described the players
council. He said we had rules. Right? But we had team rules.
Rules are what governed us when we are at our worst, right, to
keep us from running afoul of the rules. And then he said, we
have norms. We have culture that was governed by a player's
council, which was the most respected players. Who wouldn't
send you to the corner office to get yelled at, but who would
pull you aside and say, you have kind of run afoul of, you
know, kind of the team culture that we are trying to build.
So I just--I mention that because it so coincides with the
feedback you just gave. So.
Mr. Grant. Can I add to that briefly?
The Chairman. Yes. Please. And then Mr. Cleaver. Go ahead.
Mr. Grant. Thanks, Chair Kilmer. I spent sometime with
Norwegian Olympics Ski Team. These are the best skiers in the
world. They are fiercely competitive. They call themselves the
attacking Vikings. But one of the norms is when you finish a
race, you give a course report radioing up to the person who
got to ski after you to try to prepare them as best as you can.
And there is a strong distance set up to do that, which is if
you do that in the Olympics, you might give away your Gold
Medal. But they do it because they want Norwegians to beat
Austrians. All the other countries that they are performing
against. When they socialize you into that team, if you don't
live by those collaborative norms, the most decorated skier on
the team pulls you aside and says, this is not who they are,
this is not how we do things. And then if that behavior is
repeated, you are banned from the lunch table. They will build
a coalition to exclude you. And what they are trying to do is
use peer accountability mechanisms to get people to move in
line. And most of the athletes ultimately decide it is easier
to work with the team than against them.
The Chairman. Mr. Cleaver and then Mr. Perlmutter.
Mr. Cleaver. Yes, I want to follow up a little on what you
said. I have a question for you. I would like for you to
consider something I am going to say.
I played football, and my teammates elected me captain the
senior year. And before the vote, the coach, Irving Garnett,
said--before we vote, Cleaver come to the office. And I went
into his office. And he said, I just want to let you know that
if they vote, yes, which they are going to do, if you get put
out of a single game for fighting, I am removing you from
captain. I will still let you play, but you will never be the
captain of this team again.
I spoke at a banquet in Fort Worth, Texas, and looked out
and there he was sitting. And I said, this is the most
significant man other than my father in my life, my coach. I
say that not to--for any athletic purposes, I can barely walk--
but I think for my coach, top person, the most powerful person
said, if you do this, you are out had a great influence on me.
I never had--I grew up in public housing. So if you don't learn
to fight, I got a muscle because Chancey Bogan hit me on the
mouth with a brick where it cut through it. So you got to
fight. And I did.
But from the top person who was in charge of what I really
wanted to do, what I loved almost as much as I loved the world
said, you do this, and you are out. I guess the point I am
making is that if that happened around here, maybe, maybe, just
maybe. But that is just one little thing, I will say this, and
I am done--I am through talking for today.
I think some of my colleagues have said me heard me before.
There are agencies, organizations that score us on everything
we do. You know, many people would say I have a thousand, 1,000
percent NRA vote. And, you know, they give the organized
labor--children's labor--the Children Defense Fund, I mean,
everybody. Except there is not a single organization that
monitors and scores us for decency and for civility. And so, it
is easy to come to the conclusion that that is not important,
because everything else was scored. Yeah, you can go on the
computer and find out what organization scored all of us, any
time, except on civility. I am finished.
The Chairman. Go ahead.
Ms. Ripley. I am so excited that you have said that. And I
have been talking to editors of mine about this exact thing.
And can we score Members of Congress? There is different words
for it, right? But, like, basically, just decency. I like that
word. I think that is a good one. And then we get into the
weeds about what--how do we do that, would it be machine
learning, and would it be fair? And you can really--these are
like actually really important and hard questions. So I don't
mean to suggest they are not.
But I would love to hear from you all about what those
metrics would be. You know? Because, again, part of this has to
come from interest groups and news media incentivizing
different things. And we thought about what we can easily rank
conflict entrepreneurs in Congress. Right? But would we be
regarding that in a perverse way, right? And would it not be
surprising.
You know, but there has got to be a way, I agree with you,
to at least surface people who are doing something differently
and amplify that work. So I am--you know, I would love to hear
any ideas you all have.
Mr. Cleaver. Well, that which we praise inspires us to do
more of that which was praised. I--you know.
Go ahead.
Ms. Miler. I also think as somebody who uses a lot of
various scores and is familiar with some of these metrics, I
think you point out something really important, which is that
recently there are some scores about effectiveness, we have
scores for bipartisanship even, but not for stability. And so
really you right to call our attention to the absence of that
type of metric.
And, immediately, I launch into social science brain, and I
start thinking about, oh, what goes into that metric? Right?
How do we measure that? How do we measure that fairly in a way
that everybody, not just on this committee, but all of your
colleagues in the full chamber would accept as being, accurate
as being fair, as you noted, and honest.
And I think the difficulty of the task doesn't mean that it
is not worth pursuing. And it is exciting to hear that you are
actively in conversation about it, and this is something that
could be developed.
But I do think that those details are critically important
because developing a civility index that might be perceived by
one party or the other as being bias would undue the benefit to
which you call our attention. And so, hopefully, bringing it
up, we will get some, you know, sharp minds both on this
committee, in journalism, perhaps, in political science and
other disciplines as well to think about that.
And maybe having a lot of different metrics together, you
know, they will be stronger as a web of measures than any one
single measure. So, thank you.
Mr. Doherty. Thank you. I would like to follow up on that
by saying that what we have learned in this work is that any
decision has to be shared by reds and blues. So our leadership
is half red, half blue. So who is the ``we''? If the ``we'' is
journalist, blue. If the ``we'' is political scientist, blue.
Okay.
If it is one caucus versus--so it has got the ``we'' who
would develop this, which is very exciting, has to be people
who are half and half on each side. There may be some in the
middle and some others. And so I think you are bringing up
something really important. It has to be done carefully, but
who does it is key?
Can I say one other thing about sports, because that is one
of our themes here is we are in the midst of the NBA playoffs.
Ms. Williams. Go Hawks.
Mr. Doherty. I saw that last night. For Milwaukee--okay.
That is an aside. But they are fierce competitors, but when the
season is over, they care about the sport, about the game. They
care about whether we want to watch these teams, whether we
trust them. And so there is a way in which--going back to this
issue of you compete--you have to compete hard. But there is
another way in which if people don't trust Congress, what are
you running for, right?
And so the sports analogy makes sense to me because the
leaders--the people I admire most in those sports are the ones
who represent all of the players, who represent the legacy, who
care about the sport, not just about their own particular
winning. So.
The Chairman. Mr. Perlmutter. And then I have got Mr.
Phillips and then Ms. Williams.
Mr. Perlmutter. All of that is a lot heavier than where I
was going. But let me, I want to try to piece together our
hearing from a few days ago and today, and I think it works.
You know, we have been talking about, in our last hearing,
about empowering individual Members so that we feel more
worthwhile. That what we are doing is worthwhile. And to incent
dialogue, conversation, good conflict.
And, you know--I tell you--and your gladiator legislator
thing, that really hit home because that is talking about sort
of the gladiator side of this thing--the duking it out, the
competition, the rough stuff we got to go through. But we are
here to legislate in a perfect world. And it is fun when you
actually can legislate.
And so we were talking about open rules or not. And we
brought it up--I am on the Rules Committee. And you may have
seen over time, you know, us not do open rules as much, not
allow for as many amendments.
Joe Morelle suggested--and I am just throwing this out
there to everybody, that in the New York legislature, they
allowed the sponsor to agree or disagree with amendments. And
if the sponsor did not agree with the amendment, it didn't get
put on.
Now, you might not get enough votes to pass the thing, but
it gives--it just reminded me--it gives each of us a little
more power as to what we are doing, and it would--William would
say, look, I--you know, within the context of germaneness, you
know, I would like to add X amendment. Now, he and I are
talking. And it isn't only leadership saying what is allowed,
what is not allowed. I don't know.
I want to try to come with a structural approach that
empowers individuals and incense conversation in a good
conflict kind of sense. Because if you are having these kinds
of conversations, everybody is buying into it here.
I don't know. I don't mean to do a filibuster, but I am
just curious if you have any comments on that?
Ms. Miler. I think what you describe is exactly the types
of innovation that we need to think about, right? Similarly, as
we were discussing earlier, the possibility of providing a
pathway to bills that demonstrate bipartisan support or
guaranteeing active caucuses, because I know there are many,
with some more active than others.
You know, one bill, they can have one priority of Congress
that will get us basically a fast track in the procedures. I
think--I mean, some of these are going to be more workable than
others, but they all need to be discussed.
I think one of the challenges that we face as we put us all
in the same group together to use the ``we,'' trying to think
about solutions is, as was talked about last week, is the rise
of omnibus legislation. So when we don't have the sponsor of
the bill as you just described, it doesn't really control it.
It is unlikely that they have a freestanding bill coming to the
House floor on which then they can give their yay or nay on a
particular amendment.
And so that kind of builds into that broader challenge of
whether we try to revise and move away from this dependence on
omnibus legislation. Or as whether the panelists last week were
talking about, there is also an approach which is to say
omnibus is here to stay. This where we currently work. We can't
go back to the Congress of the 1970s, and so let's make the
omnibus process, you know, improve it.
And so I think as we come up with particular ideas and
reforms, some of that is going to come down to how do we see
the omnibus? Is this a permanent feature of our modern
Congress? In which case that type of proposal is going to be
more limited in its application. Or if we roll back the
omnibus, then something like that is something that can
leapfrog to the top of ideas, because, you know, that might be
something that a lot of Members would be really pleased to
support.
Mr. Perlmutter. Well, one of the reasons I brought it up,
and then I will leave this is that we are trying to avoid sort
of the gotcha amendments, the gladiator piece of this thing
where it is a constructive--you know, look, if he comes up with
an amendment, I may not love it, but I can deal with it, and I
get his vote? I don't care if I have gotten his vote versus his
vote or her vote, I have got a vote. And that is kind of how
our legislature in Colorado worked. You know, we--35 of us. And
you don't care where you get the votes, you just want the votes
to get your bill done. And it is very different than this
place.
The Chairman. Well, so, I want to invite others to take a
swing at that pitch because I think the issue that Mr.
Perlmutter is raising is one of the clearest examples of broken
culture. Right? So both of us came out of State--and I
mentioned this to Dr. Grant when I first talked to him about
this problem. Both of us came out of State legislature. Every
bill that was brought up in my State legislature was brought up
under an open rule. There has been a few amendment that was all
germane to the subject. You could offer it, it would debated,
it would be voted on. And I could think of 8 years in Olympia,
maybe five, maybe six times where I was politicized. When
someone said, I am going to play gotcha with this, so I can
bludgeon you during a campaign.
But other than that, people--if they wanted to
constructively change a bill, they would offer an amendment to
try to constructively change the bill. You mentioned that in
this town, and that seems like I am joking, right? That it is
laughable that that would happen here. And, unfortunately, and
this is without regard to party, both sides do this.
You know, what ends up happening is we have a very closed
process. So the minority feels like they have been sidelined.
And as I have shared in this committee before, like legislator
sideline is not dissimilar to the Kilmer family puppy when we
don't keep it constructively engaged. It chews the furniture.
Right? Like, that is what happens. And so there is a lot of
furniture chewing that happens in the U.S. Capitol.
So does anyone else want to take a swing at Mr.
Perlmutter's question of how--you know, are there ways--you
know, if we recommend open rule right now--that is basically
saying, I invite you to put your head into the mouth of the
lion as the culture currently exists. So do you have thoughts
on how we might more constructively engage Members so that, you
know, on the floor, for amendments, those sorts of things, the
idea that Mr. Perlmutter had or, I guess, Mr. Morelle had from
New York, or you got any other ideas? And then I will take it
over to Mr. Phillips.
Ms. Ripley. Again, I don't know the specifics of Congress,
like you do, or like my colleagues here do. But I can say that
there is a--it is a chicken and egg situation. So in high
conflict, everyone is some various level of miserable. And
everybody--it pulls you in, but you also want out.
So there is a paradox in high conflict. So everybody wants
something else on some level. So the more you experience agency
and effectiveness and getting little things done, the more you
want of that. Right? So is there a way given institution the
institution and the rules you have to sort of start small and
get people at experience? It also comes with encounters that
are well-managed.
We are like Braver Angels where--and especially good when
you have a common problem you are working on across the divide.
So I actually think it would have this positive feedback loop
of not only do you feel more agency, not only do you feel more
efficacy so you are getting incentivized to do more, but it
also breaks down some of the prejudices between groups when you
are in encounters with a common problem.
So there is a lot--there is a lot to that that makes sense.
And it is the kind of thing where the more--this is the most
misunderstood thing, I think, about--at least there was a big
surprise for me. All over the world, when people finally
experience good conflict, even in war zones, they want more. It
is like almost addictive.
Would you agree with that? Once you experience it,
especially when you have been so deprived of it, like you just
are like, wow. There is a euphoria that comes from actually--
even as you continue to deeply disagree. So.
The Chairman. Mr. Phillips, do you want to take it?
Mr. Phillips. I do, Mr. Chair. First, let me start by
saying, I love this, this hearing, and this construct with my
colleagues and these witness and this subject re-inspire my
faith in this institution and the opportunity we can to do
better.
I want to respond to a couple of notions that have been
thrown about, first of which, is a sports metaphor. As a
Minnesotan, I have to inject hockey, of course, into the
conversation. One of the most beautiful elements of hockey is
that after the N--or the third party period of a battle between
two sides, both teams line up and they shake hands. That is the
tradition. It is a beautiful, important part of the sport. I
did it since before I could talk. And I could just envision
when we open a new Congress and when we close, can you imagine
200 or so Members on each side of the aisle, getting in line
and simply shaking hands to begin a Congress and to end it. You
know, symbolism matters, and visuals matter, and I think that
would be a beautiful thing for us to consider.
Scoring civility, I love that notion. I think one of the
great ways to do so is to simply ask the other side to score
the other side. Right? Ask Members on the left side of the
aisle to score those on the right and vice versa. It gives us
an incentive to be decent to one another. If you want to score
high in the civility scoreboard, if you will, maybe rank 1
through 5, and it gives us a small incentive, but a meaningful
one to score each other.
Last, and perhaps equally importantly, you know, we are not
going to put an end to conflict entrepreneurs, we are not going
to end anger-tainment, we are not going to change all the
perverse incentives that exist in this institution, and we
probably sure as heck can affect the political duopoly of
Republicans and Democrats, and the political industrial
conflicts that survive--not just survive, thrives by dividing
us.
So my question--and, Mr. Grant, you talk about trust. And
what we can affect, I think, is trust quite easily, actually.
So, you know, Dr. Doherty, I would love it if you would share
with my colleagues what you heard, Braver Angels heard, after
you did that retreat with Representative Stauber's staff and my
staff. I think better coming from you than from me. If you
could start with that.
Mr. Doherty. Yes. Thank you. What really came out of that
was this awareness of many more commonalities than they had
realized. So I will give you an example. When we did the life
experiences exercise----
Mr. Phillips. Yeah.
Mr. Doherty [continuing]. What life experiences have
influenced your approach to public policy and the public good.
What they discovered was that how many of them on each side had
religious roots to their interest and passion for making--for
social change. And that those who work--who came out of college
with those ideals, those were more conservative, moved in one
direction and took up issues of abortion and pro life, for
example. Those who were more liberal moved into social justice
and poverty area. But the roots system was similar. The root
system was similar. That was something that was not expected.
The second thing is in all of the workshops we do, we do a
humility part. Okay? So one of the things that we did was have
each group separately come up with two issues that their Member
of Congress cares a lot about, and then to ask these questions,
how is this stereotype misunderstood, demagogued by others? So
mining was one. Immigration was another. Okay? And then--so
that was the first question.
The second question was, well, fix--respond to those
stereotypes. Respond. What do you really think.
And then the third one was how could this policy run
aground? Or what are some downsides? Well, what are some
possible unintended consequences? How might it end up in 10
years not working as well as you would like? And then they all
nailed the third one. Then all nailed the third one. Everybody
who would say behind closed doors, yeah, you know, we don't
know how--what it is going to cost eventually. We don't know 10
years how it is going to look. This is our best shot at it.
So my point is that when they were able to articulate both
what they love and also what their concerns are, humility,
there was a powerful connection. There was a ``we'' that formed
there.
I hope you have heard that from them. That is what I
observed.
Mr. Phillips. I sure did. But like I said, I think it is
stronger coming from you than from me. I just want to reenforce
that, because having seen the effect that this had on our
staffs, recognizing how we could embed that into the culture
here is really powerful stuff.
And we all know, we can't work with people we don't trust,
and we can't trust people we don't know. And sadly this
institution very much focuses on separation on day one. It
really does. The efforts to get us to know each other and tell
our life--by the way, telling a life story is so illuminating
and so informative because it expresses why we might see things
a little bit differently. And when we do that, we always find
something that unifies us.
So I just continue to implore that we bake that into day
one here, and not just with new Members, but with staff.
Because we all know how powerful staffs that know each other
and respect each other and trust one another can get things
done here too.
So to the extent that we might consider that and embedding
this into our orientation program, I think would be one of the
most extraordinary, fundamental, prospective changes we could
possibly make for the country. So thank you.
The Chairman. Do you want to chime in again? Go ahead, Dr.
Miler. And then I got you, Ms. Ripley.
Ms. Miler. I apologize. I want to add one small point about
staff, which is that in other research on congressional
capacity, I have looked a lot at staff and staff knowledge and
staff satisfaction and retention. And I think one little perk
to set here--it is more than a little perk really--is that this
would also improve staff-Member satisfaction, and it would help
retain staff. And that is something that will serve the
institution better if we can reduce some of the turnover and
kind of build that institutional knowledge in productive and
cooperative ways, I think everybody will really benefit from
that. So just a thumbs-up for that one.
Mr. Phillips. Here, here. Thank you.
The Chairman. Go ahead. Ms. Williams.
Ms. Williams. First, I couldn't agree more with a lot of
the conversations that is being held. We all view life through
our lived experiences, and that is what--that will give us a
problem when we start looking at the ratings, because civility
is also going to mean something very different to different
people based on their lived experiences.
And Ms. Ripley, I did not have the good fortune of reading
the book before I came to this hearing. But now I feel like I
need to buy it because I want to explore more of this notion of
the good conflict versus the work that we have that has come to
mean something completely different now on bipartisanship.
Because bipartisanship now to me has come to how do we really
not get much done at all, and we are not moving the needle. So
I feel like my people are still being left out and left behind,
because if we are working in a bipartisan fashion, then that
means that we are not--that we are not able to do some of the
things that are actually making progress. Because all of the
bipartisan conversations get so watered down that nothing is
actually happening.
So I want to explore more of the notion of continuing to
get into this good trouble, because we all have an obligation
to speak up and to serve our people that we are here to
represent, but in this notion of good conflict. And I guess
the--where the dividing line is and how do we get into this
good trouble, because we should be having robust conversations
and debates in Congress.
But we should also be listening to each other and learning
from that, because these robust debates shouldn't be gotcha
moments and shouldn't be cheap political hits, but actually
trying to get to this commonality so that we are advancing
policies that serve all the people.
And I would just love to hear more about how are you all
going to help us get there, besides telling everybody to read
this book.
Ms. Ripley. Other than reading my book, of course. No, I
think, yeah, this is the thing is what is the distinction? I
have found it is actually not hard to tell the difference
between good conflict and high conflict. So some of the things
that characterize good conflict are that we may not expect with
like bipartisanship or unity. You can have good conflict and
have a lot of anger. Right? You can have sadness. You can have
fear. All of that is good.
Like in the research on emotions and conflict, we can work
with those. Anger is actually really important because it
suggests that you want the other person to be better.
Where you get into high conflict, you see things like
humiliation. Humiliation is probably the key most under-
appreciated accelerant for high conflict, anything that makes
someone feel like they have been brought low, especially
publicly. So that is one to avoid, because you are basically
handing a weapon to your opponent when you humiliate them.
And contempt, disgust, right? Dehumanization, those things
are high conflict. And there are other things, but those are
some of the--so, again, to your point, we have to get out of
this trap of thinking it is what we are doing or unity. Those
are not----
And, again, to the point of rankings, right? I am sort of
less interested at this point in which--when I make my own--
cast my own votes which Members are bipartisan, and which are
this, and which are that. I am more interested in which ones
are decent to each other and are not conflict entrepreneurs.
And it is hard to know that unless you are really a student of
politics in Congress.
So, yeah, I think there are ways to tell the difference,
and there are ways to cultivate. You need to create guardrails
in your institution so that you don't fall into high conflict,
especially when your institution is designed to create it like
this one. Right? So there is a lot guardrails that have that--
and one of them is relationships.
Very quickly, I will just end with, I had the privilege of
following a group of very progressive New Yorkers from a
synagogue on the Upper West Side called B'nai Jeshurun who were
very frustrated after Trump won his election and very
distraught and didn't know any Trump supporters. And they ended
up through a series of strange events going to spend three
nights in the homes of conservative Christian corrections
officers in rural Michigan, because there was someone who knew
both groups and was trusted.
So they go--and, by the way, there was a lot of trepidation
on both sides, as you might imagine. People couldn't sleep the
night before. Both sides thought this was crazy. You know,
conservators in Michigan thought there was--what if it is
Antifa coming into their homes, you know? And never mind it is
mostly like older Jewish women, and then they are Jewish. But
the New Yorkers felt like, what are we doing? It is crazy. We
are, you know, literally putting our heads into the mouths of
lions. And they went--and I got to sort of watch, do a ride-
along on this.
And they went to a firing range, and they went to dinner,
and they had really hard conversations across big divides with
some ground rules, right? And it was almost like--a couple of
things happened that might be relevant.
First of all, all the things we disagree about--let's say
it is a big pie, like we have a big cherry pie here, right? And
there is some percentage of it that is like deep. Profound real
disagreement. I don't know what that is. Maybe it is 50
percent.
And then there is this percentage that we think we disagree
about, but we actually are totally misunderstanding each other.
That is a mysterious and intriguing percentage. I guarantee you
it is bigger than we think. It is not everything, but that
would come up, right? Like the conservatives would be like,
wait, you actually are okay with having a border for the
country? And the liberals would be like we are okay with that,
you know, and vice versa. There were these moments of like--
because they have been fed totally different news diets and
stereotypes about each right?
And then there is a percentage of things that they actually
would agree on if they had the same set of facts. Right? That
is another slice of pie. We don't know how big it is, but I am
curious. And the last piece of pie that is intriguing to me is
the percentage of things neither of them actually knows what to
think about, has a lot of internal conflict about, and is torn
about because these are hard problems, you know. And once you
are in a safe space, you are able--with relationships, you are
able to surface that complexity and contradiction.
So one of the conservative corrections officers came over
to me at some point about 2 days in and she pulled me aside and
she said, you know what is really weird? I am starting to
actually like these people. And it is--it is a feeling that
comes over you before you even articulate it. Like a feeling
like, wow, I do not agree with many things these people are
saying, and I am kind of enjoying this.
So, anyway, that was an example of good conflict that was
created on purpose across a big divide.
Ms. Williams. Thank you. And I think something that I would
welcome all of my colleagues and the panelists today, cheering
on my Atlanta Hawks would be a good way for us to come
together. And, you know.
Mr. Phillips. I will second that point.
Ms. Miler. May I add one comment on this? I think one of
the things that this conversation really got me thinking about
is the difference between compromise and common ground. And I
think that those get muddled, even amongst congressional
scholars, and probably in your own conversations with
yourselves and your staff. And I think this notion of the false
dichotomy of unity or high conflict, right--perhaps sometimes
we are not looking for everybody to agree. Right? That is
common ground.
And as you noted, there are things that just isn't going to
occur, but that doesn't mean we can't find compromise, which is
a very different concept, right? And so I would also--it
reminds me of your story about kind of a moment, right? Those
are compromises. That is not necessarily common ground. It is
a, ``Could I get this thing on there, too, and you will get my
vote?'' Right? And that is about maybe not getting your pure
dream bill, but getting most of what you want and letting some
other people get some of what they want.
And so it might be helpful to be mindful about that
difference when we talk about things and when we set up our
goals for the incentives that we have, because those lead us
sometimes on the same path and perhaps sometimes on different
paths.
The Chairman. Dr. Grant, did you want to chime in on this
topic too?
Mr. Grant. Yeah, I just--I wanted to add that I went
through conflict mediation training about two decades ago, and
I think it is something that every Member of Congress should be
required to do. One of the most useful skills that I was taught
that I find myself applying all the time was just to defuse and
neutralize, an attempt to drag me into high conflict. So if
somebody were to try to humiliate me, and the perceived wisdom
is that I could actually step out and talk about the rules of
the game a little bit, and say, ``Hey, it seems like you might
be trying to humiliate me right now. Is that what you are
trying to accomplish? Because I thought you were above that,
but I am not sure, let me know.''
And we see this when we study expert negotiators that they
will very gently label the behavior of the other side and then
test and summarize their understanding and give them a chance
to disown it. And the moment that you signal that you know what
the person is up to is the moment that you pull them out of the
fray a little bit, and you are able to have a conversation
about the conversation. Right? What are the rules of
engagement? What kind of norms of civility do we want to
follow? And I think those kind of interpersonal skills might
come in handy for some Members of Congress, but you all would
know better than I do.
The Chairman. Well, I think one of the things each of you,
in one way or another, has highlighted is the opportunity for
Members of Congress to get training, right, on what you should
know about social media, on what you should--you know, how to
negotiate. You know, our committee has made some
recommendation--this is the first place I have ever worked
where as an employee of this institution, other than freshman
orientation, there is not any structured professional
development, at all. Which I think is bonkers. Right?
So I think this is--you have given us some, I think, good
material here----
Mr. Doherty. Could I add one thing here.
The Chairman [continuing]. Yes. And then I got you, Mr.
Joyce.
Mr. Doherty. I got this really important question about
having sharp, a good conflict that isn't just watered down. I
am really glad you raised that. Because people can think, well,
I will just sort of find the mushy middle and sort of--what we
have learned in Braver Angels is that you can have sharp, well-
defined disagreement. We have a whole debate series, and the
key thing is the guardrails.
So if you and I are in a debate, you speak your views, I
speak my views, I try to listen to yours and vice versa. People
ask us questions. But I don't try to characterize your views.
Particularly, I don't try to characterize your motives. If
there is one key thing that I have learned in all of this is
stick to the issues, stick to the values, don't characterize
the motives of the other person, and don't use my terms to
describe their position.
Now, maybe in an election, I would, okay, if I am
competing, okay, because we have to draw sharp differences. But
if we are legislating, don't use my terms for what you are
doing. Use your terms. Use my terms and don't attack your
motives.
So we have had debates on questions like resolve, the
election was stolen. A recent one that sort of took my breath
away was resolve, that sometimes violence could be necessary to
bring about a larger good. Oh, my goodness. And then you have
people on either side who rationally discuss that and don't
attack the other person's motives and don't characterize the
other person's position.
And out of 2 hours, people find some--I love what you said
because they find, well, we are not even close, but oh,
actually, we are close here, and on that one I misunderstood
your views.
But if you set the guardrails of the process, the
container, and somebody has to hold that, somebody has to hold
that, then you can have sharp differences. At the end of it, we
both have influenced each other, even if we don't agree.
The Chairman. I want to bring Mr. Joyce in on this. I will
say, just in response to what you just said, Mr. Cleaver has
often raised the fact that the rules of the House, if we
enforce them--like, the rules say you are not allowed to impugn
the motives of your colleagues. And, yet, watch floor debate
and see how often someone says, you know----
Mr. Doherty. And somebody should be empowered to say ``out
of line.''
The Chairman. Yeah.
Mr. Perlmutter. The chair or the Speaker is supposed to do
that.
The Chairman. Yeah. Mr. Joyce
Mr. Joyce. Thank you. First, Dr. Doherty, in getting
prepared for this hearing, it was interesting to find that I
actually have a chapter in northeastern Ohio for--and I
appreciate that you--what your organization is doing about
bringing--reminding folks of the commonalities we have. And I
think if people would take the time to listen in this town--and
unfortunately, we have got a lot of talkers, not so many
listeners. But when you listen, you are able to get to those
commonalities.
But the one thing that I found in my ninth year now is,
unfortunately, we say remember driven, but most of the big
things that have gone through are coming--are more, start in
the Speaker's office and will come down. And with that being
the case, what do you think it would take to incentivize
leadership to start being more partisan or bipartisan? We are
partisan. We know that. But being more bipartisan and get to
that buy it folks.
I am a guy who got here in November of 2012 who is already
on the D triple C hit list, number one, and I already had my
opponent for 14. And, you know, it became an us-against-them
thing. And it is not supposed to be. You know, I don't--you
know, having been a lawyer--a recovering lawyer now--but having
been a lawyer, you are used to the negotiation of going back
and forth, and things don't just necessarily happen.
You have to listen to folks, and we would take the offers
back and forth and work through those problems. And I have
never seen leadership take the time to incentivize that, just
throw it out there as an ending one, since we have talked about
the individuals coming forward. If we are going to be tap-down
driven, how do we get buy-in from leadership, other than
changing leadership completely, I get that.
The Chairman. Anyone want to take a swing at that pitch?
Mr. Doherty. Well, it is outside of my expertise. But if I
am a leader and of an organization that the public does not
trust, maybe I should try something different.
Mr. Joyce. Fine with me.
The Chairman. Mr. Joyce, you want to--any other terms you
want to pull there?
Mr. Joyce. We talked about it.
Ms. Miler. I am tempted to leave it on that note because I
think you nailed it. But at the risk of overstaying, I think
one of the things that is interesting in the research that I
did with both political scientists and organizational
psychologists what had emerged was that party leaders are
actually very good at actively managing conflict within their
party. They demonstrate a lot of the things that organizational
psychologists look for in letting dissent be voiced in these
norms or guardrails that, you know, when you are in your own
party caucus, it stays in the caucus room, you give your
leadership a heads-up.
But there is an expectation that there will be dissent. And
leaders have certain tools and techniques that they use to get
you on board and to let you know when it is okay to not be on
board. And so there is a skill set there that everybody, both
the leadership, and Members of both parties have honed when
they are within their own party.
And so that is the really B side of it. But the challenge
really comes when we start looking across the parties on high
salience issues. On low salience issues, what we found what
Members and staff told us is that leadership neither encourage
nor discourage. They just kind of--they were too busy deal with
the small issues. But that was a gift to Members, because that
gave Members this space to cooperate on the things that
mattered to their district.
And maybe a Member of the other party has a district with
needs like yours, and that is the place. Or maybe it is common
personal experience or life stories, and that brings you to a
place. And then their leadership is just kind of hands off. The
challenge is the slice of the pie, the desire the pie analogy
that there is a high salience issue across the party, right?
And I think there we come back to the challenge of
elections, and the leader's role in those places and in really
discouraging and actively working against colleagues across the
aisle, like putting folks on a hit list right off the bat, or
what have you.
It is a function of what one of my colleagues, Dr. Frances
Lee, who has spoken with you before has talked about is this
constant competition to win the majority. And competition is
good. I mean, we seek it many ways in political life. But one
of the challenges is that when that really--as we get more
competitive, winning the competition becomes focal to both
sides more at the time. And so when one party dominates or the
other, of course, one side likes it and one doesn't, but
everybody kind of knows how it is going to play out.
When you have always every 2 years, something could change.
This could be our year to win or to lose. I think it really
makes that electoral context for party leaders very salient.
And as I said in my opening remarks, I think that that slice of
the pie is the toughest one to figure out, right? It is going
to be really hard to change the us versus them, the win-lose.
Because at least as our elections are structured, there is win
and lose. And so that to me is the toughest challenge, not to
say that we shouldn't tackle it, but, hopefully, maybe we can
build up to that challenge by, you know, addressing some of the
other areas, first, that might give us a better handle on that.
Thank you.
The Chairman. Mr. Timmons.
Mr. Timmons. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to get back
how we disincentivize conflict entrepreneurs. So we have talked
about a number of different ways. I liked the idea of civility
scoring--Mr. Cleaver talked about that--more bipartisanship
scoring, more methods of making people proud to be
collaborative to solve problems and to facilitate hard
discussions.
What other thoughts do you all have in this area? I think
it has got to be intra-party policing. And there is mentorship.
There is leadership. There is all these different ways to try
to help address conflict entrepreneurs. And I think orientation
is an important part, training is an important part. So do you
have any additional thoughts on the subject of disincentivizing
conflict entrepreneurs?
Ms. Miler. I have one thought that I think brings together
your question and Ms. Williams' question as well about--and the
notion of humiliation that Ms. Ripley mentioned, and that is
there may be instances, for example, on committees and bringing
in trust where this is always tricky because we want
transparency, but sometimes that encourages the gotcha moments.
It encourages those humiliation moments that can go out,
whether social media or not.
And so maybe, you know, there might be instances where
committees could opt for attendance only. Right? So they are
showing accountability of you knowing up to do the work, and
you can still tell your constituents you were there, but maybe
not everything is on the record in certain moments.
So there can be moments to have some of those frank
conversations where there is not the gotcha dynamic or
posturing. Right? There may be opportunities to try and find a
new balance between that accountability that is so important to
Americans' trust in our congressional institution.
So I don't want to lose sight of that. But to also
acknowledge what I am hearing from you and from others that,
you know, sometimes everything having the spotlight on, it
makes it really hard to have these conversations. And from what
I am hearing from my colleagues on the panel, that creating
those spaces can be valuable. So maybe there is small moments
like that that could help defuse and build some of that
dynamic.
Ms. Ripley. I was just going to add to that. I mean it
pains me as a reporter to endorse the idea of more confidential
meetings with politicians, but I think that is just true. It is
just human psychology. It needs to be in places where no one is
performing. Right? And many more of those places.
So then the other thing is the opposite of that, like the
storytelling point of view, part of how we got here was through
national media and politicians modeling high conflict as
entertainment.
But there are other ways you can tell stories. There is a
show in Canada called Political Blind Date. Has anyone heard of
this show? So it is actually pretty successful. And there is
one like it in the U.K. where they take politicians across the
aisle and they would spend the day together. They don't know
who it is going to be until they get there.
And they do something together that is relevant. Like if
one is against legalizing marijuana and the other is for it,
they visit like a marijuana, you know, processing factory, and
they go on a bike ride. I mean, they do things. It is a little
cheesy, but, actually, because one on one, it is harder to be
really demeaning, you know. And even though there are cameras
there, right, it is a one-on-one encounter, and there are these
moments that are kind of good television, believe it or not. It
is the opposite of what we expect. So I am sure you are all
eager to sign up for this show. I am trying to get an option in
the U.S. So.
The Chairman. We are just happy this hearing is on C-SPAN,
honestly. The fact that they are covering--thank you, C-SPAN.
Thank you.
Mr. Timmons. I am going to follow up on one quick example.
So I was invited on a commission delegation trip with a number
of Senators about 6 months into my first term. I actually
barely knew the Members of the House Republican parties. So I
didn't know anybody in the Senate.
And I was on this plane for 6 or 7 hours, and I got to
speaking with one of them at length. We had a lot in common.
And we really developed a relationship. And I actually didn't
know he was a Democrat. And we talked about it. And then I got
off the plane, and I Googled him, and I was like, oh, he is a
Democrat, wow.
So I mean, you know, don't get me wrong, it is a very
challenging thing to recreate, but it is just a perfect example
of how, I mean, we have so much in common, we agreed on a lot.
And we built a relationship without the whims of politics.
So I just think that is a focus that we have to make,
because you are not going to be mean to somebody that you have
a mutual respect relationship from, and I think that is really
what is missing in Congress. Because I don't know a lot of my
colleagues across the aisle. And there is just so many people
here. I mean, you know, it is very challenging. So it is
something I think we need to----
The Chairman. Dr. Grant, can I bring you in on this too?
Mr. Grant. Sure. I was speaking a little bit about the
research that psychologists and sociologists are doing on moral
reframing which is the idea of learning to speak the language
of other people as opposed to just your own. I think there is,
you know, there is so much divide. For example, when we talk
about climate change, I hear liberals constantly trying to
advance it in terms of protecting the planet for future
generations. Why not reframe that as the data shows this works
better if you are speaking to somebody who is conservative and
say, we are here to protect God's Earth, or we need to maintain
the purity of our planet?
And this is a skill set that I think all of us could learn.
I think it is a lot easier to appeal the values people already
hold than it is to change them.
And let me just tell you a quick story that I think
illustrates this. There was a college student named Paul Butler
who went to St. Lucia a couple decades ago, long before the
environmental movement. And he found out that there was a
parrot there that was in danger of extinction. And he decided
he wanted to save it. He started a very simple campaign that
said, Save the St. Lucia Parrot. Now there is only one problem
with this campaign. He made it up. There is no such thing as a
St. Lucia parrot. This is just a parrot that happens to live in
St. Lucia. But the moment he called it the St. Lucia parrot,
people started saying, this is our bird, and he activated their
national pride.
I think his strategy has now been applied in a couple
hundred places to save dozens and dozens of animals. And the
formula is very simple, it saved the blank, blank. The first
blank is the name of the place. The second blank is the name of
the animal.
And I think that that skill set, right, of just
understanding what the audience already values and then
connecting it to your idea, it helps you move toward common
ground, and the conflict entrepreneurs then don't have a lot to
work with.
Mr. Doherty. One thing to add, I am sure on your trip, Mr.
Timmons, you broke bread a lot. In every religious tradition
that I know of, a common meal is part of the connecter. And
that would be one--this is one way to humanize each other.
Mr. Timmons. Alcohol does that.
Mr. Doherty. Potato chips. Okay. And so that would be a
simple way. Because it is hard to demonize somebody you break
bread with regularly. It is hard to demonize them.
Mr. Cleaver. Dr. King did that magnificently. I mean, the
day before he was assassinated, he had gotten in a big argument
with Jesse Jackson. And if you go to the Lorraine Motel, one of
the things you see is that the lunch that Dr. King had ordered
on the table petrified. And--but he always did it, if he had an
argument with Shuttlesworth, he said, let's have lunch the next
day.
So I do think that it is power, there is power in breaking
bread together. I don't know we--we rarely ever, ever do that
unless maybe it is a codel. And that is because this place is
messed up.
And so everywhere in America they had lunch except here. I
mean, you know--you know, you might have two hearings from
11:00 to 1:00 that run from--so we don't--I mean we do--a lot
of this, the things we do I think we practiced to do it on
ourselves--do it to ourselves. I mean we--you know, I have said
enough about it.
The Chairman. Go ahead.
Ms. Ripley. There is so much low-hanging fruit here. I
mean, the fact that you all don't eat together, ever, is
astounding to me. Like that seems like a fixable problem. And,
yeah, it is one of the conditions that leads to good conflict,
having food together is very basic. Music. Starting a meeting
with music. Right, like, there is some basic things that are
just like low-hanging fruit. Right?
And maybe there can be meals that are influenced by a
certain region of the country or State. Right? Or ways that you
are again blurring the lines between Democrat and Republican
based on something that is real and resonate for people.
And I would just add that it is not only that it is harder
to--there is so many benefits. It is not only harder to
demonize or be mean to someone you have a relationship with,
that is true. And you know more deeply what is actually--what
is actually driving them, right?
So the St. Lucia parrot example, like, you are able to
figure out what are the words and perspectives that are going
to resonate with this person because you understand what you
actually disagree about, which is a huge deal.
You know, most conflicts are not about the thing we say
they are about. There is an understory to conflict. So, you
know, when married couples, right, fight about money, it is
about a hundred other things, right?
And there is a million examples of this from people who
work with couples. But it is never about the thing we fight
about. So we figure what is it about? And it may take 6 hours
on flight, but you can get there. So you are able to get more
done because you know what is actually going on with them,
really, not just what they are saying.
And the third benefit of these relationships that is very
tangible is that you can help when the crises happen, you can
call them and find out what is actually going on. So the way
you prevent political violence all over the world, and the U.S.
has spent a lot of money on this trying to help other countries
do this, is to have relationships across divide so you can
snuff out rumors and fake news and false information, and
disinformation so that things do not escalate very quickly. So
there is like lots of really--beyond, you know, it is just
nice. Lots of really good benefits.
The Chairman. Go ahead, Dr. Grant.
Mr. Grant. If I could just make one more point before I
have to exit for my next meeting. I think one of the virtues of
having a large organization of 435 people is you have lots of
subcultures. You have lots of different kinds of relationships
and collaborations represented across Congress.
And one of the things we often study in psychology is the
idea that you don't necessarily have to start with the
problems. In some cases, you can look for the bright spots. The
pockets of excellence where people are actually trying to make
progress and advance toward meaningful solutions, I think this
committee might be an example of that.
But I would love to see a poll done of Congress of what are
some of the proudest moments that you have experienced during
your time here where people actually thought about what was
good for the country as opposed to their own base, or their
agenda, or their own party.
And then as you identify the people that are responsible
for those moments, some of the practices and habits that have
driven them, you can begin to crystalize those into values and
norms, and then spread them into orientation, into training,
and ideally give the people responsible as well leadership
roles because they are culture carriers.
And I think if you find those pockets of excellence, you
are in a better position then to make sure that they scale
across the organization. Thank you for having me.
The Chairman. Thank you.
I feel like that is a good place to stick the landing on
this hearing.
With that, I want to thank all of our witnesses for their
testimony.
And I would like to thank our committee members for their
participation.
I also want to thank our staff for pulling together such
great witnesses and for securing the Armed Services room. And
C-SPAN, thanks again.
Without objection, all members will have 5 legislative days
within which to submit additional written questions for the
witnesses to the chair, which will be forwarded to the
witnesses for their response. I ask our witnesses to please
respond as promptly as you are able.
And without objection, all members will have 5 legislative
days within which to submit extraneous materials to the chair
for inclusion in the record. Phew. With that, we are adjourned.
Thanks, everybody.
[Whereupon, at 1:01 p.m., the committee was adjourned.]
[all]