Chuck Ludlam ’67 was one of 200 Stanford alumni given the Centennial Medallion in 1991. In addition to his 30 years of service on the Hill and in the White House, he served for eight years as the principal lobbyist for the entire biotech industry.

Over several decades I served as committee counsel on Capitol Hill and the White House, I viewed policy and politics as cross-cultural because I have served twice in the Peace Corps. I learned to be tolerant of differences across cultures, and it seemed logical for me to also be tolerant of diverse policy and political viewpoints.

I always worked for Democrats, but I knew that this was a cultural choice. Similarly, I knew that Republican staff raised in Christian-observant homes came from a culture very different from mine and would likely hold different policy views. I was tolerant of them, and it led me to ask why they believed what they did, rather than ascribing them to bad motives and low intelligence. I also believed that our country’s survival depended on finding ways to listen and be more tolerant and less vitriolic. 

Cultures reach different conclusions across all issues: how to be a good person, how to run a family, community and nation, determining appropriate gender roles and practicing tolerance towards those who are unconventional. Around the world, the diversity of responses to these questions runs the gamut. Certainly, there are some answers that are strange or even offensive. But my preference is tolerance of these choices. I respect the rights of cultures, individuals or parties to have different viewpoints, and I value the practice of listening to them. I abhor extreme rhetoric and personal attacks, and I embrace the necessity and value of compromise. For me, the interests of the country or community are more important than those of any leader, group or political party.

On Capitol Hill and in the White House, I focused on enacting legislation to make smart and effective policy. To me, it was never just a question of power and posturing. I wanted both parties to claim credit and hoped to preserve the health of policymaking institutions. I cared about parliamentary rules and the separation of powers. Decorum and long-term relationships were also priorities. I was not averse to compromising on specifics, as long as central concepts remained. I often found that Republicans helped me draft a better bill or amendment.

My payoff for being bipartisan was that it gave me multiple additional opportunities to advance good policies and legislation. Often, I was the only Democrat open to working with Republicans. That was a huge advantage for me. When I retired, I gave an oral history of my top 25 policy projects, and I could see how well I had done due to bipartisanship. 

The most telling example of my focus on bipartisanship was when I was working as counsel to Senator Joseph Lieberman. Although he was positioning himself in 2004 to run against President George W. Bush, it was natural in 2002 for Lieberman to support the Bush Faith-Based Initiative. Lieberman was famously bipartisan. I never had a better boss. I became his staffer on this bill, a strange situation for me, as I’m a lifelong, committed atheist. The Republican Senate lead was Rick Santorum, a pariah with Democrats. We solely focused on the bill.

Senators Lieberman and Santorum introduced a bill I drafted that dodged the controversial church-state issues. The first key provision was the creation of tax-free charitable distributions from individual retirement accounts (IRA rollovers), which enables a taxpayer, in effect, to deduct a contribution made to a charitable organization. The other key provision, and my favorite, was the establishment of individual development accounts (IDAs) to give matching grants to spur savings by poor people. The IDA plan is fair given the $400 billion dollars we award as incentives for IRAs and 401(k)s — most of which goes to the well-to-do. Only 1% of the benefit from these incentives flows to the lowest-earning 20% of U.S. workers, while 58% accrues to the highest earning 20%. All I wanted was $15 billion in incentives for poor people to save! When poor people become savers, it transforms their lives; it is not a windfall for doing what they would do anyway. Consigning the poor to depend on subsidies is not remotely as effective as helping them to save and become independent. 

No Democrat had any reason to criticize these provisions. Supposedly, charitable organizations and the poor are priorities for the Democrats. Nonetheless, they killed the bill by proposing an extraneous amendment to end the provision of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that exempts religious organizations, including churches, from prohibitions against religious discrimination in hiring. Others may disagree, but I believe that Democrats killed the bill because it was associated with President Bush and his faith. The biggest losers were charitable organizations and the poor. Yes, the IRA rollover eventually became law, but this was our one and only chance to enact IDAs. It has not been possible since. This was the worst defeat in my career. The most painful. It was the least bipartisan. 

In 1965 and 1967, I was a Stanford in Government (SIG) intern on the Hill, which led to my public service career. Out of gratitude, over a 40-year period, I was the principal mentor to generations of SIG students. I was one of three people who crafted the Stanford in Washington program. I endowed the SIG office at the Haas Center, and I endowed SIG Fellowships. In all of my dealings with students, I never cared if they leaned left or right. I was focused entirely on whether they cared enough to be engaged in the political trenches. I always counseled SIG to be bipartisan. We need the brightest Stanford students to take up public service careers, irrespective of their viewpoint. 

I’m not naïve about the effectiveness of vitriol. Unfortunately, arguments can be persuasive when they are laced with exaggerated predictions of gloom and doom and the worst possible interpretation of their opponent’s position or morals. Lies are hard to rebut. It may take several generations of ruinous policy results for the venom to dissipate. The risk is that with ruinous policy results, the vitriol may become even more vile. 

The quest for political power has intensified in part because the country is so evenly divided. Either party can win the House, Senate or White House. As turnout is key, pitches are more flamboyant and apocalyptic. Social media and the mainstream media are in a brawl to attract clicks and views. We see harsh measures to demand allegiance from party office holders. Swift retribution awaits anyone who deviates. There is no pause in the warfare between elections. Billions and billions of dollars fuel the venom. Arrogance and desperation drive it all. 

Ultimately, the politicians won’t abandon their vitriol unless it loses its power to sway voters. Vitriol works and will continue when voters believe it and act on it. We should be especially skeptical of the motives of politicians. If we aren’t, the country suffers as the pendulum keeps swinging wildly left and right. Only when the vitriol of politicians doesn’t work and backfires will we see them focusing more on listening and advancing the best policies for us, not for them. Everything I think and feel tells me that we’re at risk. But I am an optimist and believe we will demand more civility as we wrestle with profoundly complicated issues.