Something about partisanship...
As a lot of you know, I was deeply involved with the Democratic Party here in Cleveland, Ohio. For 8 years, I was the elected treasurer of the Cuyahoga County Democratic Party.
The chairman encouraged me to represent the party on the talk shows he couldn't make so I made the rounds of the local radio and tv shows. A lot of times I shared the stage or the mic or the desk with a Republican.
Now we disagreed about a lot of stuff. But when the camera went off or the mic was dead, we would talk and joke and I got to know several of these guys so well that 15 years later, they are facebook friends.
As someone pointed out in another post, I am sorry I didn't remember which post because I was distracted, the whole partisanship blew up when Newt came to town. Thankfully, that did not trickle down to the local level. It wasn't until the late 1990's that hyper partisan ship hit the local level here in Ohio.
Up until then people were able to draw a distinct line between governing and politicizing.
What Christie and Obama did today was do what was right for the people without one thought about how it would play. This is how it is suppose to work.
But now that the Newt way of governing is the "model" for modern politics, we have gridlock and that only does one thing; increasing the power of private sector.
So when President Obama extends a hand to the other side, think about what it is he is really doing. Think about it. the last two Democratic presidents Clinton and Obama both were ready to strike a deal to improve the country. The last two republicans were basically my way or the high way.
The people aren't stupid. They will take this picture of Christie and Obama talking to each other and remember that this is how we do it.
The wild card in all of this is the 24/7 news cycle that clamors for point and shout conflict to keep it all churning so people will watch. If we can just rise above this, well, it's possible. Now if they can do something when a disaster isn't looming overhead.
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