Political Motive Asymmetry

In his speech, Speaker Ryan says, "In a confident America, we also have a basic faith in one another. We question each other’s ideas—vigorously—but we don’t question each other’s motives. If someone has a bad idea, we don’t think they’re a bad person. We just think they have a bad idea." 

It is true, however, that many Americans not only have a lack of faith in politics but also have a general lack of trust in people who may disagree with them on policy issues. Arthur Brooks, in his recent TED Talk, discusses political motive asymmetry, the phenomenon of assuming that your ideology is based in love and your opponent's ideology is based in hate.  

For conservatives and liberals to work together on important issues like poverty, it is crucial that they get past political motive asymmetry. If liberals continue to believe that conservatives simply do not care about the poor, there will be no way for the two sides to work together for a solution and for politics to become "ideas, passionately promoted and put to the test." If conservatives continue to believe that liberals have an agenda of purposefully inhibiting peoples' self-sufficiency, work ethic, and independence from welfare, the two sides will never trust each other enough for debates to be about ideas rather than motives.

There is a need, as Brooks discusses, for there to be more people who blur the lines between conservatives and liberals. He writes, "if you're a conservative, be the conservative who is always going on about poverty and the moral obligation to be a warrior for the poor. And if you're a liberal, be a liberal who is always talking about the beauty of free markets to solve our problems when we use them responsibly." Perhaps this can be one solution to the problem of political polarization or gridlock we see in politics.