Change We Could All Believe In

(From the Janesville Messenger, 11-16-08)


My regular readers tell me that they least like the columns in which I comment on politics. I have heard that statement from enough people that I have purposely avoided that topic during the course of this year’s elections. If you are one of those readers, my apologies for this column.

After a campaign year that got even more nasty and divisive than I thought possible, I was pleasantly surprised on Election Night to hear statements from John McCain and Barack Obama that gave me hope for the future.

In his extremely gracious concession speech, McCain lauded Obama and urged his supporters “to join me in not just congratulating him, but offering our next president our good will and earnest effort to find ways to come together to find the necessary compromises to bridge our differences and help restore our prosperity, defend our security in a dangerous world, and leave our children and grandchildren a stronger, better country than we inherited.”

“Whatever our differences,” McCain said, “we are fellow Americans. And please believe me when I say no association has ever meant more to me than that.”

Obama, in return, also extended an olive branch and echoed the same theme of working together.

“Let us resist the temptation to fall back on the same partisanship and pettiness and immaturity that has poisoned our politics for so long,” Obama said. “And to those Americans whose support I have yet to earn, I may not have won your vote, but I hear your voices, I need your help, and I will be your president, too.”

It would be easy to dismiss such talk as the usual public relations statements that are supposed to be recited after an election. Call me naïve, but in the case of both Obama and McCain, I believe they meant them.

What surprised me most about McCain’s concession speech was how early in the evening it arrived. I expected to go to bed not knowing the results of the election. I couldn’t help thinking, watching McCain speak, that the guy seemed relieved. Not just relieved that the election was over, but relieved that he wasn’t the one inheriting what a friend described as a convulsing economy, a fractured political landscape, two nagging wars, and a financial crisis that only ten people really understand.

That doesn’t mean that I think he wanted to lose. But I think he saw that it was not the end of the world to return to the Senate and be the solution-seeking politician he used to be before the forces of the GOP coerced him to change.

McCain is an honorable man. It surely horrified him that several of his appearances, including his concession speech, were marred by angry constituents that even booed him when he dared utter something nice about Sen. Obama. His rebukes of those misguided supporters and defense of Obama were incredibly admirable. How must one feel to stand at a podium and think, these are my people?

Unfortunately, “party first” thinking is not limited to hardcore people at political rallies. Now that their legislative branch domination of the GOP is complete, both on the national and state level, I envision Democratic legislators drunk with power, ready to push their agenda forward like a runaway bulldozer. That would be the last thing we need right now.

I sincerely hope that President Obama and Governor Doyle do not allow that to happen. Based on my past experience working with state legislators, I must admit I have more confidence at this point in the President-elect.

However, as I write this, Rep. Mike Sheridan from Janesville is considered the front-runner to be elected speaker of the state assembly. He would be a good choice; Sheridan knows the value of compromise. He reached out to management at General Motors and his efforts certainly resulted in the local plant remaining open a good five years more than it might have. Elevated to a leadership position, he would now be free of party pressure to set the example and work toward advancing the people’s business.

The one thing missing from our state and national legislators in the past few decades has been the spirit of compromise in the name of the big picture. Anything less than a complete victory is seen by hard-core party members as weakness. Had our founding fathers taken such an approach at their Constitutional Convention, this great nation would have never been formed.

Obama’s message was “Change.” McCain’s was “Country First.” I do not see those ideas as mutually exclusive of one another. At this time of crisis, we have to quit focusing on whether we are Republicans or Democrats, liberals or conservatives, and just focus on being Americans.

That, my friends, would be a change we could all believe in.