Our political divisions have not always been as bad as they are. They will be better again.
The Missouri Humanities Council will be holding a webinar at 7 p.m. Thursday called Show Me Statesmanship. The council invited me a few months ago to be part of it. If you want to watch, sign up at the council’s web page.
Clearly, today’s political dialogue is more noted for its antagonism than for its comity. While many observers focus on the ugliness of our dialogue, this program focuses on times when opponents were not enemies, when differences need not to have been destructive, when personal differences did not preclude personal interaction.
The council asked some former Senators to be part of the program too: former President Pro Tem Charlie Shields, Jeff Smith, Scott Rupp, Jolie Justus, and Rita Heard Days. Several other senators were part of the discussion although they didn’t have speaking roles: Bob Dixon, Kevin Engler, and the late Wayne Goode and John T. Russell.
Statesmanship is not easy to achieve as an individual nor is consensus easy to achieve within groups. This program focuses on those times when seeming political opposites did join together to enact good public policy on significant issues. It concludes that those things could happen again, no matter how toxic we might consider our political environment to be today.
It was good to hear and tell those stories and I think all of us who took part in this program look forward to a time when these things can happen again more frequently.
The thought-provoking video runs about 35 minutes. The producers have asked me to field questions and comments for the rest of the hour. It’s a nice compliment although I am a little nervous about being some kind of Oracle.
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Bob, I watched this program last night, as well as your remarks afterward — outstanding! I didn’t realize it at the time it was implemented, but I now agree that term limits was a big mistake. But there’s an even bigger problem that’s preventing “statesmanship” at the Capitol, and that’s gerrymandering. Most districts have become so non-competitive that they’re won or lost in primaries, so extreme views are rewarded. We see so many far-right legislators now, with no interest in compromise. They wiped out Clean Missouri, the ballot initiative that would have helped. And when we see them refuse to fund Medicaid expansion, which the voters approved, that’s a truly despicable act. And now trying to restrict the ballot initiative process. And install new voter ID requirements. Move after move to limit representative government and keep power for themselves.
part 2, earlier comment cut off:
I, like many in the film, hope for better times, but I don’t have a lot of optimism right now, because I don’t see a solution. Like Bernie Sanders said, it’s hard to work with colleagues that supported overthrowing an election and assaulting the Capitol.
Thanks to you and the Humanities Council for a ray of hope.
Jeff Briggs