Years of research in social psychology and a read of human history tell us that one way to combat incivility in politics is to focus on shared goals.  Democrats and republicans can agree about rewarding people who build businesses and not rewarding patent trolls.  Given that, this is certainly an area where cooperation over shared objectives, as opposed to competition, can breed civility.

From this Politico article: 

But just as Democrats and Republicans came together to pass the 2011 Leahy-Smith America Invents Act, which brought the most comprehensive change to our nation’s patent laws in 60 years, we again are working in a collaborative, bipartisan way. Our legislation will make it harder for bad actors to succeed, while preserving what has made America’s patent system great.
 

We can only hope that in other areas such as reducing the deficit, improving our nation’s healthcare, improving the economy, and promoting peace, we can also focus on our shared goals, as opposed to our conflicts.

– Ravi Iyer

↵Research suggests that seeing members of your party and the opposite party get along can have a positive effect on partisans.  Given that, one of CivilPolitics.org's goals is to highlight cases where members of opposite sides of the aisle interact positively, to counteract the many stories of them interacting negatively.  A most striking case of positivity across the aisle was reported by Politico today, where Tea Party firebrand Ted Cruz gave genuine praise to President Obama in a recent speech:

“I want to commend President Obama for two different things. Number one, I want to commend President Obama for listening to the bipartisan calls to submit to the constitutional authority of Congress. That was significant, it was the right thing to do and I’m glad he did so,” Cruz said in a detailed foreign policy speech at the Heritage Foundation’s 4th Annual Jesse Helms Lecture Series.

“And secondly, once the issue came to Congress, that gave the American people a chance to speak up,” he added
 

Given their respective roles in each party, it is heartening to see such words.

– Ravi Iyer

Research in social psychology as well as a reading of human history indicate that competition breeds incivility between groups, while cooperation breeds the opposite.  One of the hallmarks of current hyper-partisanship is the permanent campaign, which effectively means that politicians are always in a state of competition, as opposed to cooperation.  However, in times of crisis when decisions of great importance need to be made, politicians, and the nation, have historically been able to cooperate.  We see some of that in the current rhetoric about Syria as Bill O'Reilly and others have implored conservatives not to let politics prevent them from doing whatever they feel is the right thing.

It is beyond the scope of this site to judge whether military action in Syria is correct and there are principled reasons to believe that it is the right thing to do, as well as many principled reasons to believe that it is the wrong thing to do.  However, we would urge politicians to vote their conscience on this issue, and not their politics.  With such important decisions, the least of our politicians concerns should be whether "if you vote for a military strike you lose the ability to complain about whatever stupid thing Obama, Kerry, and Hagel come up with."  Sometimes getting the policy right is more important than the next election, something which is sometimes lost in the current hyper-partisan climate.
 
– Ravi Iyer