Spencer J Eggers/The Daily Campus
To secure the nation’s future, American political leaders must learn to compromise, Former Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates said, when addressing a packed McFarlin Auditorium Tuesday evening for the second Tate lecture of the season. CNN Senior Political Analyst David Gergen moderated the discussion.
Gates, who admitted the Cold War heavily influences his world view, said political polarization, resulting in an inability to resolve crises like the nation’s debt and deficit and crumbling infrastructure, is a mounting threat to American national security from within. Those issues, Gates said, require the focused application of a consistent strategy over the course of many years and will never be resolved during one presidency or one Congress.
“My concern is that that requires compromise — people coming together from both the (political) left and the right and agreeing on a fundamental strategy that can be supported whether or not one party or another controls the Congress or the presidency,” Gates said. “Unfortunately today, compromise has become a dirty word, synonymous with abandoning your principles — of walking away from what you believe in. And yet the Constitution itself is a bundle of