https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/akgjvb/bipartisan-compromise-on-infrastructure-dooms-planet-earth

Looking back on my formal American history education, I recall how much emphasis was put on the positive power of compromise. Problems were solved, disputes avoided, great policies forged in the fires of debate and reconciliation. 

I remember learning of the three-fifths compromise, the infamous deal that broke the deadlock at the Constitutional Convention about how enslaved people ought to be counted for purposes of representation in the federal government. The compromise, of course, was to count them as three-fifths of a person. What a brilliant solution, my teacher emphasized, a creative middle point between the two factions wanting either zero or whole. A country saved by the power of compromise, just as it would later be by the Missouri Compromise, the one that drew a line down the middle of the country and said any new states admitted above that line cannot have slaves and any states below it can.