Reclaiming the Middle Ground: Jill Long Thompson’s Vision for a More Collaborative Congress

[RUSH TRANSCRIPT BELOW] “We need more members of Congress who recognize that there’s value on both sides,” says Jill Long Thompson, a former U.S. congresswoman from Indiana who served in the 1990s. As a Democrat, she represented a heavily Republican district as a fiscal conservative.

She says that today, polarization and gerrymandering—the redrawing of district lines for partisan benefit—have made people like her few and far between in Congress.

“We are electing people who are either further to the right or further to the left,” she says.

In this episode, Thompson makes the case for a return to bipartisan cooperation and civil discussion across the political divide. She’s the editor of and a contributor to the new book “Across the Aisle: Why Bipartisanship Works for America.” It features essays from a number of current and former members of Congress, both Republican and Democrat.

Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

RUSH TRANSCRIPT

Jan Jekielek:
Jill Long Thompson, such a pleasure to have you on American Thought Leaders.

Jill Long Thompson:
It’s a pleasure to be here. Thank you.

Mr. Jekielek:
Your book, “Across the Aisle, Why Bipartisanship Works for America,” begins with two people from the opposite sides of the aisle, the Senate Majority Leader for the Republicans, and the Senate Majority Leader for the Democrats, writing an essay together. And they’re saying that Congress isn’t working as it should. Please tell us about that.

Ms. Thompson:
I think there is reason for concern that, in the Congress, but more broadly across the country, that people are not working together. And for democracy to work, for a representative democracy to work, whatever form of democracy. The process by which we adopt legislation and execute legislation, it has to be inclusive. That’s what a democratic system is all about. And we all have a responsibility in making democracy work.

Mr. Jekielek:
I hear a lot that Congress isn’t really working for us right now. So how did this happen?

Ms. Thompson:
I think one of the challenges we face is that we are going through a transformation, if you will, in how people receive information with the reduction in the number of independent local news outlets. And many people are getting their information from social media platforms. And you don’t have the same standard of accountability as you know from the work that you do. Independent media have, legitimate independent media have rules about how they cover stories and the stories that they cover.
But many people are getting their information from Facebook or from X or from some other platform. And the person who is posting the information may have an ax to grind or an agenda to promote. It’s not independent reporting. And we need to work through this. I am old enough to remember when President John Kennedy was running for office and how television was playing a much bigger role than it had in previous election cycles.

And there was concern that leaders who would be very effective, but maybe who weren’t so photogenic on camera, would be passed over for someone who wouldn’t be as effective as a leader, but was good-looking on camera. And we’ve worked through so many of these kinds of issues.
But I do think that independent journalism is critical to the democratic process.

Mr. Jekielek:
So I want to talk a little bit about someone I’ve been reading quite a bit lately. Andrey Mir is a Manhattan Institute scholar who has written about how the media, the way they work today, he would argue, right, is inherently polarizing. This is across some of the biggest media as well, because what is the business model that works? and if they react to that,
have a strong reaction to that sometimes, maybe are even incited by that, confirm some of their ideas, then they will buy the subscription. And so if you play that out over time, you can end up with quite a polarized climate.
And there’s this incentive to kind of give people what they want, not necessarily sort of the objective picture of reality. So your thoughts.

Ms. Thompson:
That is a challenge. And I think that as we revise K-12 curricula and higher education include information literacy, how to evaluate what you are reading or what you are seeing, and also tie that to the importance of being a responsible citizen in a democracy, that we not only have to be looking for information, we have to be looking for accurate information. It is human nature.

My major field of study in my doctoral program was consumer economics. And it is very natural for us to look for things that confirm what we already believe or what we want to believe. But in the long run, we’re all better off if we tell ourselves the truth as well as tell others the truth. I do think information literacy is something that needs to be included in K-12 education as well as in higher education.

Mr. Jekielek:
Give me a bit of a picture of how you came to be elected and think about these things so deeply.

Ms. Thompson:
Well, not to belabor the issue, but when I was six and I would come home from school, we were given a choice. My mother would go out and register voters in that election year, and my dad would milk the cows, and they asked us what we wanted to do. Did we want to go with mom or did we want to go with dad? My brother chose to go to the barn and help my dad milk the cows and he became a very good dairy farmer.

I went with my mother to register voters and then a number of years later when I was in graduate school at Indiana University, it was in the late 1970s and we had double digit inflation and we were in a recession and I realized that with the opportunities I had had at Valparaiso University, where we are today, and also at Indiana University, that I actually had a better understanding of macroeconomics than many of the leaders in our country who were talking about the economy.

And I thought, well, maybe I should use my degree to advance good policy rather than to make money. And that was just a very significant time in my life. And I made the decision that I would pursue a career in academia, but also look at opportunities for serving in public office. And the first office that I ran for was for city council here in Valparaiso. And I was elected in my early 30s to serve on the city council here. And I really liked working with people, finding solutions to the challenges that we faced here in Valparaiso.

Mr. Jekielek:
So you’re now in city council and it’s natural, you have to run for statewide office or what happens?

Ms. Thompson:
Well, I decided that I really liked the policy challenges at the federal level. And that’s when I decided that I would run for Congress and had some opportunities when I was running for Congress. Our candidate for the United States Senate dropped out of the race. I think he had a health issue that he felt he needed to address. And the state party endorsed me to, before the primary election, endorsed me as a candidate.

That was 1986, and I ran actually against Vice President Dan Quayle for the United States Senate and I didn’t win that race obviously but it was real it was an opportunity to get to know people across the state of Indiana and I really grew in my appreciation for the talent and and the ability that we have as a state and I began to see that when it was just like working on the farm and working with our neighbors. If you work together, you find workable solutions to move your community forward, your state forward, and your country forward.

Mr. Jekielek:
Please give us an example from your own time in Congress where you really needed to make bipartisanship work.

Ms. Thompson:
I felt like I needed to do that every day. I am a Democrat, and I represented one of the most Republican districts in the country. I’m also a fiscal conservative. I think that came from growing up on a farm and watching my parents manage the family business. And so for me, it was about good policy. And I even took the no new tax pledge as a member of Congress. And there were some in my party that didn’t like that I did that, but I really felt at the time that we needed to get spending issues addressed and we needed to do a better job of analyzing what we were getting for our dollar, if you will.

From a business standpoint, if you’re not getting a return, and it can be a social return, it can be national defense. I actually think national defense is very tied to the social well-being of our citizenry. And it all just kind of meshed, if you will, and not unlike what you study in macroeconomics or consumer economics. You start to see how the long-term outcome is determined by how strong, how good your decisions are from the get-go. advise me on issues, whether it was agriculture or business or education or health care, that there was, if you will, political diversity among those who were advising me. And actually, not only did we find that we were learning from each other, but we also learned that we were in much more agreement than we were in disagreement.

I served on the House Agriculture Committee, and the differences that we had between were based on geography more than on politics. So if you were from the South, the crops that you grow in the South, cotton, rice, sugar, although we have beet sugar in northern states as well, you’re going to agree with anybody as long as they understand agriculture in your community. And so it was just very common for Democrats and Republicans to work together on policy.

Mr. Jekielek:
Somehow things have changed a bit. In your book, you talk a little bit about how the advent of cheaper air flight, for example, actually significantly changed things because people could easily go to their districts. And it seems to make sense too, right? Because they’re responsible to those districts or states. But that actually created another difficulty, which is people weren’t getting to know each other as well.

Ms. Thompson:
Yes. Yes. But I think that gerrymandering is a real issue for us that needs to be addressed because we are electing people who are either further to the right or further to the left. And I think we need more members of Congress who recognize that there’s value on both sides, that being fiscally conservative does not have to be a Democrat or Republican issue.
Being responsible with tax dollars that are being provided by the people across this country, that’s a responsibility that we all have. country. That’s a responsibility that we all have. Drawing congressional lines so that you have safe Republican and safe Democrat districts. I think that we end up electing people who are really not that interested in the middle.

Mr. Jekielek:
Your book is a plea to work across the aisle. When I look at Congress right now, there’s maybe one or two actually quite important areas where there is bipartisanship, but a lot of people are wondering, is bipartisanship just over now?

Ms. Thompson:
I don’t think it’s over. This country has been through some very rough times. And we could go back to the Civil War, for example. That was horrible. I think we’re going through a rough time. And I think that we will find solutions, but we all have to recognize what democracy is. And it’s, again, we have equal rights and we have equal opportunity to participate in the political process. And we need to respect one another. And if you are fortunate enough to live in a democratic society, you have to take those responsibilities seriously.

And just because you’re on social media doesn’t mean that you should be able to say something that’s rude or disrespectful. And we will get much further and we will get there faster if we take into account the importance of respecting everyone in our democratic process. We don’t have to agree, but they have a right to express their opinion, just as I have a right to express their opinion just as I have a right to express mine.

Mr. Jekielek:
What about the forces that aren’t interested in common ground?

Ms. Thompson:
Well, then those of us who are, we just have to work that much harder. That’s just the way it is. I mean, it’s like being a member of a family and somebody in the family is misbehaving. We just all have to do our best.
But we need to all be talking about it and we also need to all be reaching across the aisle if you will in our communities and I you know I have friends on both sides of the aisle and we have discussions and we disagree.

I had a discussion with a neighbor the other day. He was wearing a cap that was disrespectful to my political party and he ended up telling me, I love you, when we talked about it. And it’s how we talk. It’s not just what we say, but it’s how we approach our neighbors and our friends.

Mr. Jekielek:
And this is incredibly important, what you just mentioned, because there’s a sense not just among the politicians, but I’ve talked to multiple people who truly believe there’s some sort of divide, their fellow American that might be
wearing the disrespectful hat, that there isn’t common ground to be found.

Ms. Thompson:
They’ve come to believe that. And that’s why those of us who believe there is common ground, but it’s probably as much an issue of communication. I have a neighbor who has told me things that he’s read or seen on a social media platform that are completely false. And I will provide him with valid information. And he’s glad to get it. But I do it respectfully because I genuinely respect him. And I think we need to realize how important everyone is and how important their feelings are.

Mr. Jekielek:
Well, I’m going to mention this very quickly. Often when I talk about democracy on these shows, some of the conservative viewers will say, Jan, it’s a constitutional republic. Remember that, right? There’s all sorts of
democracies out there. This is a constitutional republic. And of course, that’s true. When you say democracy, you’re talking about the American version, right?

Ms. Thompson:
Yes. As you know, I had another book published, “The Character of American Democracy.” And this is a democracy, whether you want to acknowledge that or not. It’s a representative democracy. But that’s a democracy. It would be like saying, well, if it’s not a gasoline engine in a car, it’s not a car. Well, no, it’s an electric car. And so it’s a type of democracy that I think makes sense back to the issue of being informed.

As citizens, if we spent all day long studying issues, we still wouldn’t have the information that we need to make the best decisions on policy. And so electing somebody to represent us makes considerably more sense and you’re going to get better decision making if you elect good people who understand what it means to live in a democracy and to serve in a democracy.

Mr. Jekielek:
One of the early chapters in your book is Senator Todd Young, also from Indiana, someone I admire greatly. He was instrumental in seeing the CHIPS Act passed on one of the rare bipartisan issues, which is the communist China threat, in this case, from the manufacturing side of things, obviously also the national security side of things.

Ms. Thompson:
I think that Senator Todd Young, and I think some of this comes from his military background, but probably more of it comes from his family’s background, if you will. He is the kind of leader that I am interested in making the country stronger and not doing something that would weaken us as a country economically or in national security or in any way. He and I don’t agree on a number of issues, but he is someone that I feel we can trust. He will tell you what he’s going to do, and then he does it, and he shows respect for those that disagree with him and that he disagrees with.

And that’s what democracy is all about. It’s not unlike a family. We don’t always agree with everything that other family members believe or want to do. Yet we get much further and we’re much stronger when we work together and listen to each other and we learn. Research shows that the most successful legislators in getting legislation passed and signed into law do so by reaching across the aisle and they conduct business in a bipartisan way. And it just truly makes sense. You learn every time you talk to somebody who has different experiences than your own.

Research by the McKinsey Institute shows that in corporations, those corporations that have leadership that is diverse, ethnically, racially, in gender, that they outperform other businesses that don’t have that diversity. They perform better financially. When we talk to people who have a different life than the kind of life that we live, and we listen to them and we show respect, we learn something. We become smarter, if you will. I have been around a few years, and I want to, for the rest of my life, have opportunities to talk to people who disagree with me so I can continue to learn.

Mr. Jekielek:
Let’s talk a little bit about bipartisanship where maybe it can go wrong. So I’ll explain why I’m saying this. I was just looking at the jobs number update recently, and that’s almost 820,000 jobs that it turns out never existed, right? Then there’s also these what you could call phantom companies that ostensibly propped these jobs up. That’s a massive change.

The implication, by one of our columnists, is that we may really be in a quite significant recession given this new update of numbers. And at the same time, there seems to be a kind of bipartisan agreement that we should keep running these huge deficits. And it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to understand there’s a limit to how much you can do that. At some point, you fall off the cliff, the question is, there doesn’t seem to be a serious interest in dealing with this in a bipartisan way.

Ms. Thompson:
Yes. Let’s go back to gerrymandering, where you have safe congressional districts. Why do you compromise or make compromises if it really doesn’t matter whether or not you will be reelected? And I think all of these things are intertwined. I remember when President Clinton put together a budget that was balanced. I could not support it because I had taken a no- pledge and it did have tax increases in it, but it also balanced the budget. And I really felt uncomfortable that I couldn’t vote for it because I thought it would be good for the country.

At the same time, I don’t think that you should promise something to your constituents and then not keep your promise because that undermines the credibility of the process and it causes people to lose trust and I thought keeping my word took priority over supporting the legislation that I, once it was finalized, that I thought was actually good. That was a very, very difficult time for me.

But I think that we really need to have greater balance in the congressional districts so that the people that we’re sending to serve in the U.S. House are going to pay attention to both Democrats and Republicans and also to independents and libertarians. We have to listen to one another and recognize that we don’t have all the answers.

Mr. Jekielek:
I hadn’t really thought deeply about the implications of having, you know, these districts gerrymandered as a kind of the way things are done today, right? So you’re, I mean, you would advocate for instituting policies in Congress that demand that you have people of different perspectives included in, you know, districts, various, I suppose at every particular scale, right?

Ms. Thompson:
Well, what I believe would be very useful would be having congressional districts drawn in each state by independent commissions rather than by politicians who are elected to office. And that you would have the commission would be made up of membership that is balanced politically. I think that’s what we need. And that’s not the only thing. That won’t solve every problem. But I think that would be a very important, a very positive change for us.

Mr. Jekielek:
What other corrections could be made here?

Ms. Thompson:
I think we need to look at how we’re financing campaigns. And the challenge is, of course, making sure that we don’t do anything to undermine our right to freedom of expression. You can put money into that as long as you’re reporting it and the public has access to know, so that they can learn who is funding different movements and different political candidates. I think we do need to strengthen our laws regarding how we fund campaigns and what information has to be made available to the public. But then we also have to make sure that people have good media opportunities to find out that information, to find that information, if you will.

Mr. Jekielek:
Well, one of the authors in the book talks a lot about this and specifically, of course, the implications of the Citizens United Supreme Court decision, which opened up the floodgates of corporate money. And then there’s this other element where instead of focusing on representing the constituents, the members are basically spending so much of their time fundraising. And in fact, even how you’re appointed on committees is determined by how well you can raise money. And that seems like a different sort of skill set than being effectively representing a congressional district, for example, or state?

Ms. Thompson:
We might be able to do it through incentives, because it is very important to protect the constitutional right of freedom of expression. And we have to be very careful about not limiting that. But I do think that there are incentives that you can provide, funding incentives that would make it very clear to the voters who’s acting in their best interest versus who’s acting in the interest of getting more money for their campaigns. But it really has become unwieldy.

And that Supreme Court ruling, I’m not a lawyer, and so I don’t want to make a judgment regarding that decision in the context of the First Amendment. But I do think that we need to, at the very least, encourage less big spending, especially by individuals and corporations and organizations where everything is transparent so the public can see who’s funding what candidates. And you can look that up, but it takes a long time to do it. And that’s why we need an independent media where people do that as part of their work and make that available to the public.

Mr. Jekielek:
You know, one of the things that I keep thinking about, and you, of course, do talk about this in your book as well, that for this all to work, for American democracy to work, you need an informed citizenry who appreciates how the system works, participates in the system. And certainly the research that I’ve seen up to now suggests that things are really going in the opposite direction on that front. And so, you know, you can’t help but wonder how this can work if there isn’t that, you know, level of civics education or even an interest in that?

Ms. Thompson:
We have to just keep working at it. And those of us who really believe in this country, and we are participants because we believe in the country more than because of something that we personally want. There are organizations like Common Cause, for example. There are news media like The Epoch Times. We need to make sure that we’re getting the word out there to as many people as we can. It’s not going to be simple. It just isn’t. But it’s worth the effort.

Mr. Jekielek:
I mean, absolutely. And one thing that’s very interesting, sometimes when you look from the outside a bit, you can see the value bar. I’m Canadian and I deeply love this country, right? I’m, as I’ve said before, kind of a rare Canadian-American exceptionalist. Having worked on the China human rights space, for example, having worked in all sorts of places around the world, it’s easy to not realize what you have, and you take for granted what you have, and how unique, having been learning about the American system, the uniqueness even compared to the Canadian parliamentary democracy, the special protections that exist from the tyranny of the majority, if you will, so to speak, in the American system that are
pretty unique. It’s amazing and one can lose sight of that. This is one of the things I want to try to kind of transmit to Americans is like, hey, you have something really incredible and precious. And it does absolutely require working with the people you’re a bit suspicious of.

Ms. Thompson:
An analogy that I like to use, and I referenced this a little earlier today, is that it’s not unlike making a family work, if you will, and keeping people healthy, as healthy as possible, given all of the challenges. But the families that are able to work together and respect one another and listen to what others have to say, I think that you can say the same thing for a democratic government, and that’s that we need to care about one another principles of character pillars of character include trustworthiness and this is universal around the world trustworthiness responsibility respect caring and and if we care about our neighbors if we respect our neighbors we don’t have to respect every decision they make, but we need to respect them as people, as our neighbors. We need to care about everyone.

My dad had a saying that has stayed with me my entire life, and that is, you never know what someone else is going through. And so it’s important to always try to be understanding and show respect for them so that it will help their day go better. And we need to do that just in our personal lives, but in democracy, it’s also critical. We need to do that.

Mr. Jekielek:
How do you deal with the situation where people might just have bad information?

Ms. Thompson:
When someone has bad information, we should not ridicule them for that information. We should listen to what they say and then provide them with better information, better documentation, and a more valid source of information. Democracy depends upon us getting good information from people and doing our best to have the facts. If we misstate something, acknowledge that we misstated it. And we will just get so much further in the long run. It’s not always comfortable when we misunderstand something. But if we are respectful to others, there’s a greater chance that they will be respectful of us. And we can set that tone. Each of us can be a part of that.

Mr. Jekielek:
Jill, I’ve really enjoyed this conversation with you. A final thought as we finish?

Ms. Thompson:
Well, I’ve enjoyed this as well. To wrap it up, I would say that when someone is saying something that you really disagree with and that you really find unacceptable, you have a choice. You can respond in kind and be also disrespectful. On the other hand, you could be very thoughtful and kind and understanding.

And the probability of having a real discussion gets better if we do that in our lives with our neighbors and our colleagues. And we set a good example for those who are representing us in Congress and in other public offices. I think we will be a much stronger country,
a much stronger democracy. And I think we will all have a better life than we would if we didn’t do that.

Mr. Jekielek:
Jill Long Thompson, it’s such a pleasure to have you on the show.

Ms. Thompson:
It’s an honor and a pleasure. Thank you. And very, very honored that you are interested in the book and also glad that you are interested in these issues. It’s so important to our country.
Thank you.