Renaming the Unpopular

I loved this snippet from an interview with Speaker Boehner. In particular, this line stood out:

J. BOEHNER: When you say the — when you say the word “compromise”…

STAHL: Yeah?

J. BOEHNER: … a lot of Americans look up and go, “Uh-oh, they’re going to sell me out.” And so finding common ground I think makes more sense.

So if we have to do something, but people don’t like it, let’s just rename it. Now I happen to think compromise can be a good thing, so long as it’s not on an essential principle. But “finding common ground” is rather similar. When you find common ground you have necessarily passed by not-common ground. If you do the things you can get together on and not those you can’t, well, you have compromised.

But whatever works!