We can call this first form of political fallibilism, as our sitting President has, self-conscious humility.  Jeff has highlighted what is good and worthy in this practice, especially when compared with strident ideological inflexibility. This argument has also been forcefully put forward in a long-standing controversy about the existence and nature of an “Obama Doctrine.” Some commentators approve of this policy, and others don’t; all agree that the Administration is trying, anyway, to strike a balance between “realism” and “idealism,” between Kissingerian realpolitik and George W. Bush’s “Freedom Agenda.” In other words, the Administration’s policy in Iraq, Afghanistan, and more recently (and more tortuously) in Libya, is all about recognizing political fallibilism, even if not always put expressly in those terms. More recently, over the past weeks, with the circus over the debt ceiling raging, and political leaders competing over who can use the words “imperfect” and “necessary” more often and in closer connection, we’ve seen the “domestic” side of this form of repudiating over-confidence with the uncertainty of political events. Whether at home or abroad, this form of political fallibilism is all about the recoginition of one’s limits. Not just the limits of one’s capacity to act under a certain constellation (such as not having limitless resources, not being able to “dictate” to other nations, or serving as chief executive during a period of divided government). But also, and more importantly, the limits of one’s ability to know the truth about matters that one must act upon. Who are the Libyan rebels? What might a post-Assad Syria look like? How many jobs will be created in the next 6, 9, 12, 18 months under this or that blend of interest rate lowering and/or stimulus spending?.

So far, I suppose, I do no more than provide some contextualization to Jeff’s thoughts, if I have succeeded in doing this much. However, without undercutting this form of political fallibilism, I want to point to a second, and I believe deeper form. To uncover it, we should remember the core convictions of (philosophical) fallibilism, as developed (among others) by the great American philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce. While easy to oversimplify, the heart of this epistemological position is not hard to briefly express. Let’s put it thus: it is neither true that there exists some knowledge claim that can be asserted with absolute certainty, nor is it true that every knowledge claim can be reasonably doubted. A fallibilist, in this sense, is someone who believes in the existence—and the importance—of what Plato’s Socrates calls “true opinion,” but also recognizes that both the subject who believes and the object of that belief are caught up in a developmental process: that all truth is historical. This does not commit one to the view that nothing is true, nor must one think that all beliefs are equally fallible. But it does mean seeing the fallibility as endemic to the possibility of knowledge, and not to the psychology of the knower, or the physical conditions of things to be known. One is not saying here, “I might be wrong about this, but…” Rather, one is saying, “I might very well be absolutely right about this, but even if I am, that about which I am right might very well not be what it is right at the moment. I might be right about it relatively soon.”

A classic example of this “structural fallibilism” is the perception of what Aristotle calls “common sensibles,” most infamously, perhaps, color.  The structural and the humble fallibilists both agree that there is no certain knowledge of color as such; while the humble fallibilist attributes this to the subjective conditions of the knowledge—that the senses err, that other minds perceive color differently than we do—the structural fallibilist says that what is actually “out there” to be perceived as color is context-dependent.  So to say, it’s not our “fault” that we will never perfectly perceive what’s “there,” it’s that, in a very real sense, there’s no “there” there.

And here we see, I think, a difference between the two forms. In the quote with which I began, Jeff—rightly, to my mind—underscored the deleterious role of “true belief” in undermining the possibility of the first form of political fallibilism: one cannot be ready to make political compromises (i.e., recognize the limits of one’s ability to act, responsibly) if one refuses from the outset to recognize the limits of one’s knowledge. At the same time, the second form of political fallibilism actually embraces “right opinion,” and calibrates one’s belief in that opinion not against the limited possibility for one to be right, but against the limited possibility for events to allow for being right. In both cases, one acknowledges fallibility.  The difference is that, while in the first instance, this is based on the certainty that one cannot infallibly assert their view, insofar as any view of things can be mistaken, in the second, one is rather certain that the object of their view is itself uncertain.  This is what makes fallibilism in the second sense an anti-skeptical position.

This second form of fallibilism has an analogue in the political arena. In place of the “humility” of the first form—which is still focused on the psychological and physical conditions of the knower who would act in public, the structural form puts before us the possibility of holding contradictory beliefs, while understanding them as bound within separate spheres. Humility-fallibilism leaves you saying something like: “It is my earnest conviction that, but…” Structural fallibilism provides the space to say: “Given that it is my earnest conviction that the United States can never stand by idly as dictators murder their own people in the streets, and that it is my earnest conviction that the United States cannot use military means to ensure that all people, everywhere, can live free of such indiscriminate violence, it is clear that one or the other of these two convictions will be violated when the decision is made to intervene militarily when a dictator decides to use indiscriminate force against unarmed citizens. All the same, I am going to act, confident that I can never know if events will vindicate my decision, but also that I have acted on the best of my knowledge.” Under this scenario, the fallibilist can embrace the uncertainty of political developments as an end, and not merely as a means, of the cultivation of open societies.

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.” The Gang represents the driving force of contemporary compromise: bipartisanship. All too often, however, bipartisanship simply means party parity. Seven Democrats and seven Republicans negotiating becomes a ‘”compromise.” Nothing needs to be conceded by either party, and concessions need not be equal. The Gang of 6 at least attempted to include a spectrum of political opinion, including Southern conservatives like Saxby Chambliss and Northern liberals like Dick Durbin, whereas the “Gang of 14” was almost entirely composed of centrists from the Southwest and Midwest. But in an age of unprecedented partisanship, the gang model seems increasingly unsuited to its environment. The Gang of 6 proposed sweeping spending cuts and revenue increases: cut the deficit by $4 trillion in a decade, overhaul the tax code, and ensure the solvency of social security. The proposal provided significantly more spending cuts than revenue measures, but, even as Senate Republicans lined up in support, the House summarily dismissed it. The Gang did not receive the adulations that its predecessors enjoyed – it was derided by the Tea Party as the “Gang of 666.”

Contrast the effort of the Gang of 6 with the deal just reached. Substantively, there are similarities in the legislation and the Gang’s proposal. Where they differ, the latter tends to be more moderate. Both are worded so as to ensure both domestic non-discretionary spending and military budgets are cut, and both ensure deficit reductions in the trillions. In fact, the current deal presents a much more modest goal of $2.7 trillion in cuts. However, many large issues, including where the bulk of the cuts come from, have been deferred to a joint Congressional “supercommittee.” In very real ways, the substance of the deal will not be known until the supercommittee submits its legislation on December 23^rd.  But, at this early stage, it appears the White House deal achieved what the Gang could not.

When President Obama was elected, I had hoped that Washington might move past the ‘bipartisan’ era into a “nonpartisan” era. Democrats and Republicans would still fiercely compete to enact their agendas, but the legislative process would not be determined solely by party strength. The old cliché “be careful what you wish for” holds true. More often than not, we saw Cantor and his “Young Guns” undermining Boehner, Tea Partiers versus chamber deans, and the Senate versus the House. Obama played this advantage to the hilt and showed a shrewd control over the process of compromise that had eluded him during previous big-ticket debates. Gary Alan Fine correctly observed, for instance, missed opportunities in ARRA). Obama stayed firm to several core values. He was insistent on vetoing a short-term deal, and appalled at the idea of forcing students to pay interest on loans without deferral. Lo and behold, the final deal includes a long-term fix, if not the grand bargain he initially wished for, and an increase in Pell grants. In contrast, Republican negotiators drew a line in the sand in front of every issue; if everything is a core value, can one really stand for anything? Boehner and his colleagues succeeded in framing much of the debate, but it came at the cost of ceding their bargaining power to parties that were actually willing to solve the problem in good faith.

What this means for the future of the legislative process rests largely in the hands of the supercommittee. Composed of six members from each party, it still has significant differences with the “gang” model. It will force members of each chamber and faction to directly engage with each other. It gives a national platform where voices of reason and conciliation might be heard. This is only the second joint committee in history with the authority to write legislation. Its mere existence will change the landscape. As a couple of ABC News bloggers write, paraphrasing Benjamin Franklin, for now we only have “a deal – if they can keep it.”