The situation has clearly deteriorated further over the last five years. Just yesterday, a respected senator from our neighboring state announced that he will not seek re-election. Senator Evan Bayh blames excessive partisanship and legislative gridlock for his withdrawal from national politics. He cites two examples from the last couple of weeks: the voting down of a bipartisan commission to address what may be the biggest threat against the nation, the ballooning deficit and national debt; and, the failure of both left and right, for doctrinaire reasons, to reach agreement on legislation to address the most urgent issue facing the country, job creation.
The American public rightly despises this partisanship, the politicians who promote it, and Congress as a whole for succumbing to it. Our nation – and its citizens – deserve and demand an entirely new way of doing politics.
Country over party: Likely we are stuck with a two-party system – unfortunate because it inevitably encourages an “us vs. them” mentality – but we must always put national interest above party advantage. When we score cheap political points, we inflict lasting damage on our nation and our people.
Cooperation over obstruction: We will always have philosophical and political differences, but these disagreements must never overtake the shared values which unite us. Progress through compromise is always superior to gridlock through partisanship.
Responsibility over blame: Currently our economy remains in crisis. The worst threats of recession may have passed. But unemployment remains unacceptably high; large numbers of the working poor have lost their homes and jobs; millions remain without access to affordable health care. We could make cheap points with party loyalists by blaming each other for the crisis. Instead, the nation looks to its political leaders to work cooperatively toward recovery, and to set in place safeguards to ensure that such a meltdown never happens again.
Integrity over smears: With each passing election cycle, political campaigning and posturing have less and less proximity to truth. But while smear campaigns may win elections, they lose the respect required to govern. Let us represent each other’s positions with truth and honesty, not with smear or innuendo.
As President Obama said in his State of the Union address, we need to reform not only legislation but also legislators, not only the work we produce, but also how we work with (not against!) each other. “We can’t [no, experience shows that we actually can, but the welfare of the country demands that we mustn’t] wage a perpetual campaign where the only goal is to see who can get the most embarrassing headlines about the other side — a belief that if you lose, I win…. Washington may think that saying anything about the other side, no matter how false, no matter how malicious, is just part of the game. But it’s precisely such politics that has stopped either party from helping the American people. Worse yet, it’s sowing further division among our citizens, further distrust in our government.”
As a person of sincere, albeit imperfect, faith, I commit myself for the course of this campaign to seek the welfare of all people of the 6th District, not of Democrats alone, to seek consensus wherever possible for the advancement of our district, to represent fairly the views of my competitor for this congressional seat and his party, to state clearly where we disagree but to do so accurately, to identify points of difference but not to score cheap points.
