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Separate and Divided - A Challenge
Here in my adopted home state of Maryland, the horse known as Smarty Jones recently won the Preakness Stakes, the second leg of the Triple Crown. The race, which I watched, reminded me once again of Ray Rivers, my childhood coach. Mr. Rivers used to drive the tractor around Saratoga Racetrack after each race to smooth out the course. He did this every August during the short, four-week meet for as long as I can remember.
When I listen to the current political debate on the war in Iraq, health care, education and the assortment of other issues, I have this recurring thought. What if I went to Mr. Rivers’ house and filmed him talking about his concerns and hopes. What if I went to a lot of people’s homes?
Then, imagine that I played these clips next to the commercials from the two presidential candidates? I bet you the two sets of tapes would seem as if they are from different planets.
How can that be?
It seems that the presidential candidates’ strategy is to reinforce people’s differences and biases rather than to engage them in envisioning how the nation can move forward. They are locking people into a divided state. There are few real ideas that they ask people to consider. They utterly fail to inspire people to think beyond themselves. They are unwilling to ask people to give of themselves. They merely tell us that we can have whatever we want, without any trade-offs or costs.
If I were to gather in the same room all the people that I filmed, I bet, with a good discussion moderator, that over time they could figure out various ways to deal with issues like health care and education. I know this because I have done it. It wouldn’t be easy; people would get angry; no one would get exactly what they want. There might even be some new taxes involved.
I know campaigns are tough. I’ve worked on over 20 of them myself. But I also know that if the candidates (and those of us as individuals) merely play to our own superficial ideas and fears, this nation will stay divided.
The candidates need to trust the American people a bit more – to be able to engage beyond the superficial. They need to challenge us, too. We need to challenge ourselves. Otherwise we all end up separate and divided. -
Welcome
Welcome! Today is the first installment on my new blog. I’m excited about this venture – talking with you about some ideas I have and hearing about your own.
I’ll be writing about public life, why am I so concerned about it, and how we can place it on an alternate path. To me, public life is about the relationships between and among people and how we individually and collectively act on common problems and hopes.
So much of public life has become about division, fragmentation and negativity; we spend more time pulling things down than we do figuring out how to move ahead. Just look at the current race for the White House. It’s all about “red states versus blue states”; how different everyone is from each other; and how the presidential candidates should spend their time on the 5 or 10 percent of undecided voters.
Sure genuine differences exist between people in the country; but you’d think different Americans are from different planets when you tune into some of the current analysis. Sometimes I think that the people who write and say these things haven’t spent much time in real communities.
One of the key lessons I take away from more than 15 years of working in communities with leaders, organizations and citizens is that people want to engage in public life, shape their future, and make a difference. There will always be differences among us; at issue is how we choose to deal with them. Right now, too many politicians, civic groups, pundits and others exploit these differences for their own gain, rather than engage with them in hopes of producing something productive for society.
What do you think? How divided are we? Are we able to transcend the differences that do exist? What will it take to create a sense of common direction?
I look forward to hearing from you. For my part, I’ll start commenting on these and other questions. There's lots to talk about -- and do.