By Eugene Halton, August 11th, 2011 
Let us call experience seniority. And let us mean by this that people who work over extended periods of time develop, ripen, face the hard knocks of life day in and day out, and that they usually gain from the experience.
To be experienced is to have spent the time, paid the dues of the job, learned what it takes, put out the raw energies and skills required. And more: to be experienced means that one has internalized all these things, and that one can bring to the everyday situation of work an array of competencies that the inexperienced are unaware of. That is why this precious game of life requires the serious engagement with it. Engagement brings, even if only eventually, an enlargement and a subtilization of competencies, things that one has in one’s hands, in one’s plan for the day, in one’s skill set, in one’s general work habits, all which add up to becoming experienced.
But consider: “senior” in America typically means old people, not only not at the top of their game, but also not necessarily competent. In the right-wing attack on seniority in the public sphere, and unions more generally, seniority translates into deadwood. Now every institution has some tiny percentage of deadwood in it, people who have disengaged from their work experience. But to assume, for example, as Republican state legislatures are in the process of doing, that teachers with years of experience are the deadwood whose seniority rights have to be eliminated (meanwhile ignoring the administration deadwood), is sheer folly. It completely ignores how those experienced teachers incorporate a reservoir of potential mentoring and actual “how-to” knowledge. It is a way of promoting inexperience at the cost of experienced professionals. And isn’t that what the mad-hatters’ Tea Party celebrates in politics as well: lack of political experience as a qualification for office?
Seniority in the workplace means that the years and decades you have put in paying your dues to the job count for something in the work community, and that a larger and deeper outlook and ability is something . . .
Read more: Have You Ever Been Experienced?
By Casey Armstrong, August 3rd, 2011 
Like many, I have serious reservations about elements of the debt deal. But from a standpoint concerned only with the legislative process, the debate in Washington has not been “business as usual.” In recent months we have witnessed two primary, parallel attempts at compromise: The “Gang of 6” in the Senate, and the Obama-Boehner-Cantor talks at The White House. To me, the failure of the “Gang,” and the ultimate success of the White House talks, is a sign that our government is undergoing a significant shift in the way it legislates.
Change in the legislative paradigm is not a radical event – it has been the norm in our Congress’ history. Compromise, specifically over “perceived truths,” as Jeffrey Goldfarb notes, is the heart of the legislative process. Among the oldest approaches to compromise was John C. Calhoun’s “doctrine of the concurrent majority,” where the goal of legislation was to accommodate all ideas. During the “Golden Age,” Henry Clay championed the idea that “all legislation…is founded upon the principle of mutual concession.” Now, Obama’s inability to strike a “Grand Bargain” should not be seen as an unqualified failure; grand bargains can only be made within a legislative framework where both sides are willing to sacrifice equally, a point I will return to shortly.
Turning to the present day, we find two curious episodes in the Senate. First, we have an attempt by the Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell to cede portions of the Senate’s power to the Democratic President. The Senate has always fiercely defended its own sovereignty with a ferocity that can only equal debates over world-shattering policy changes. William S. White, perhaps the most eminent scholar on Senate history, noted that it is “harder to change a [standing] rule than to vote to take a country to war.” For McConnell to suggest that the Democratic president takes the reigns is a clear act of desperation, a sign that the existing framework of compromise familiar to McConnell no longer applies.
Second, we have the “Gang of 6.” . . .
Read more: Bipartisanship’s Last Stand: What does the Debt Deal mean for Legislators?
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, September 2nd, 2010
 The Tea Party Movement is an instance of the politics of small things–much like some of the causes I have supported. In their interactions, and through its members’ commitment to their cause, a power has been genuinely created. What changes the Tea Party will cause for American politics as a whole is yet to be seen.
The Tea Party Movement is an instance of “the politics of small things”–a version on the right. I am not a supporter of the aims of this movement, as I was of the Dean and the Obama campaigns and the anti-war movement, and earlier of the democratic opposition in the former Soviet bloc.
In those instances of “the politics of small things,” I was very much both a participant and an observer. I observed how real alternatives to existing practices were developed in ways that I strongly supported, i.e. the development of the Solidarity Trade Union Movement and Democratic opposition in Poland, the emergence of Barack Obama as President of the United States. But even though I am not so involved or supportive of this new instance of the politics of small things, I recognize it for what it is. People have been meeting each other, sharing opinions, discussing strategies, coordinating tactics and becoming clearly visible to each other and to outside observers.
Power has been created in these interactions. This cannot be artificially manufactured. It would not exist unless people willingly and actively took part. The success of this depended upon active participants interacting with others and bringing themselves along. Even if there are powerful forces behind this movement( see Frank Rich’s op-ed and Mayer article), its political power is primarily generated by people acting in concert, as they took part in the Town Hall meetings of the Summer of 2009 and in many other local and statewide movements and campaigns since, and in major demonstrations, such as the one Glenn Beck organized for September 12, 2009 in Washington and now again last weekend at his . . .
Read more: The Tea Party Effect
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