Although I may have been a former actor, I knew something about negotiating. As president of the Screen Actors Guild, I'd matched wits with some of the shrewdest negotiators on the planet--people like Jack Warner, Frank Freeman, the president of Paramount, MGM's Louis B. Mayer, and the heads of other studios.When I began entering into the give and take of legislative bargaining in Sacramento, a lot of the most radical conservatives who had supported me during the election didn't like it. "Compromise" was a dirty word to them and they wouldn't face the fact that we couldn't get all of what we wanted today. They wanted all or nothing and they wanted it all at once. If you don't get it all, some said, don't take anything.
I'd learned while negotiating union contracts that you seldom got everything you asked for. And I agreed with FDR, who said in 1933: "I have no expectations of making a hit every time I come to bat. What I seek is the highest possible batting average. "
If you got seventy-five or eighty percent of what you were asking for, I say, you take it and fight for the rest later, and that's what I told these radical conservatives who never got used to it. "
--Ronald Reagan, An American Life, p. 171
Abraham Lincoln on duty and compromise in the face of human injustice:
As to the policy I "seem to be pursuing" as you say, I have not meant to leave any one in doubt.I would save the Union. I would save it the shortest way under the Constitution. The sooner the national authority can be restored; the nearer the Union will be "the Union as it was." If there be those who would not save the Union, unless they could at the same time save slavery, I do not agree with them. If there be those who would not save the Union unless they could at the same time destroy slavery, I do not agree with them. My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union. I shall do less whenever I shall believe what I am doing hurts the cause, and I shall do more whenever I shall believe doing more will help the cause. I shall try to correct errors when shown to be errors; and I shall adopt new views so fast as they shall appear to be true views.
I have here stated my purpose according to my view of official duty; and I intend no modification of my oft-expressed personal wish that all men everywhere could be free.
Yours,
A. Lincoln.Letter to Horace Greeley, Washington, August 22, 1862
Two of our greatest Presidents ever, infidel25. You might want to give that some thought. It is very easy to sit on the sidelines, a little mouse, with no accountability, out in the darkness of the audience, and criticize, while those who stand on the world's stage must act.
It is a simple question that goes like this:
In the nearly 30 years since the issuance of the opinion in Roe vs. Wade, considering the millions of dollars spent on lobbying, and countless tens thousands of hours of legislative and court time consumed in 50 states, how many of those efforts wound up in a compromise which allowed a regulatory scheme which stopped one single abortion?
Considering that the opinion allowed 2nd and 3rd trimester regulation, it would seem to me that the efforts to stop the practice should have started with the permissible, instead of going for the whole ball of wax.
Thanks for posting that quote by Reagan. Its a good one!
Always follow the $$$.