The Lost Art of the Deal

If Vice President Vance was sincere this Spring when he reported that negotiations had failed because the Iranians did not accept the U.S. proposal, I have grave doubts about whether he understands even the rudiments of negotiations. The news media’s credulous statement that “marathon negotiations” had failed after only twenty hours on a single day raised similar questions about the reporters and editors involved. And the widespread tendency of progressives to insist that all bad outcomes could have been avoided if Democratic leaders would only “just say ‘no’” suggests a level of naivete that will pose a serious obstacle to maintaining the movement’s unity and effectiveness. Although I am not a scholar of Negotiation, I have participated in, or been close to, a lot of high-stakes legislative (and litigation) deal-making, both successful and failed. The pervasive misunderstanding of what public policy negotiations involve prompt me to want to survey some of the most egregious errors.…