Make America. . .compassionate again?

What does compassion have to do with civic engagement? This is not an idle question, but—seeing as I am a political candidate for the first time in my life—it is one that came home to me with particular force recently.

The scene was a cocktail party, the kind of affair where one spends most of one’s time shooting the breeze with total strangers about relatively inconsequential things like sports and the weather—and of course, at this time of this midterm election year, politics.

My conversation partner was a middle-aged woman, like myself. She proudly identified as a rock-ribbed conservative Republican. I happily shared that I am a progressive Democrat, and running for the Montana Senate. We amiably chatted about sports—“Go, Grizzlies!”—and about how pleasantly protracted our Eastern Montana summer has been.

But then the subject turned to politics. “So,” she ventured, “you’re a Democrat. I suppose you support that proposal to make us hard-working Montanans pay all the medical bills for those welfare cheats— people who are too lazy to get their own insurance?”

“You mean I-185? Well, yes,” I answered. Those Medicaid recipients who stand to benefit from it are the working poor and disabled; they are not deadbeats. I explained that to my mind Medicaid expansion is a great deal all the way around. She responded: “As a taxpayer, I don’t want to pay for it.”

I asked if she is a smoker. She said she is not.

Then none of her taxpayer dollars would be going that way, I replied. Medicaid expansion is a federally funded program that the state buys into; that’s where the proposed cigarette tax increase comes in. And it provides healthcare for those low-income citizens who must meet strict standards to qualify.

“They should get a job,” she responded. “Instead of being a financial drain on the rest of us.”

But they mostly have jobs, I pointed out. Medicaid recipients are the “working poor” and disabled. And beyond that fact, according to a study released a few months ago by the University of Montana’s Bureau of Business and Economic Research, continuing the Medicaid expansion begun in Montana in 2015, will generate 5,000 jobs and $270 million in personal income each year through 2020.

“That makes no sense!” she responded testily. “How does raising taxes create jobs?”

“Well,” I ventured, “it takes a lot of personnel and infrastructure to provide healthcare for roughly one in ten Montanans. Medicaid expansion is a job-creator.”

“There are other ways to create jobs than Medicaid,” she said with a cool shake of her head. “This just isn’t necessary.”

“So, are you saying you are willing to deny health care to 91,000 Montanans who cannot afford it any other way?”

She gave me a level look: “Right,” she said, turning to walk away. “I just don’t want to pay for them.”

That settled that. End of conversation.

I was shaken. But, upon reflection, not surprised.

Whatever happened, I wondered, to “compassionate conservatism?” In our ever more contentiously divided society, is there no longer room for simple fellow feeling? For community spirit? For affirming the obvious fact that, whatever “this thing” may be, we are all in this thing together?

The answer we have heard more and more frequently, from Republicans and self-proclaimed conservatives in Washington and in Helena, is that the poor will always be with us, and we don’t have to pay for them. Or for social justice, or workers’ rights, or environmental safeguards or affordable education. Or for bleeding heart liberal Democratic values, like “compassion.”

But maybe, just maybe, it’s time to make America compassionate again. We can do this, in the coming election. Not simply by voting in favor of I-185, but also by voting against candidates who stand for discrimination, intolerance and division. As John McCain would be reminding us, were he still here: We are better than all that.