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a tradition based on the simple idea that we have a stake in one another, and that what binds us together is greater than what drives us apart, and that if enough people believe in the truth of that proposition and act on it, then we might not solve every problem, but we can get something meaningful done.
I had preserved my independence, my good name, and my marriage, all of which, statistically speaking, had been placed at risk the moment I set foot in the state capital.
In me, one of those flaws had proven to be a chronic restlessness; an inability to appreciate, no matter how well things were going, those blessings that were right there in front of me.
Someone once said that every man is trying to either live up to his father’s expectations or make up for his father’s mistakes, and I suppose that may explain my particular malady as well as anything else.
No blinding insights emerged from these months of conversation. If anything, what struck me was just how modest people’s hopes were, and how much of what they believed seemed to hold constant across race, region, religion, and class.
Not only did my encounters with voters confirm the fundamental decency of the American people, they also reminded me that at the core of the American experience are a set of ideals that continue to stir our collective conscience; a common set of values that bind us together despite our differences; a running thread of hope that makes our improbable experiment in democracy work.
In an era of globalization and dizzying technological change, cutthroat politics and unremitting culture wars, we don’t even seem to possess a shared language with which to discuss our ideals, much less the tools to arrive at some rough consensus about how, as a nation, we might work together to bring those ideals about.
We know how high-flying words can be deployed in the service of cynical aims, and how the noblest sentiments can be subverted in the name of power, expedience, greed, or intolerance.
I am angry about policies that consistently favor the wealthy and powerful over average Americans, and insist that government has an important role in opening up opportunity to all.
I also think my party can be smug, detached, and dogmatic at times.
We disagreed on the scope of our disagreements, the nature of our disagreements, and the reasons for our disagreements.
No, what’s troubling is the gap between the magnitude of our challenges and the smallness of our politics—the ease with which we are distracted by the petty and trivial, our chronic avoidance of tough decisions, our seeming inability to build a working consensus to tackle any big problem.
And yet our debate on education seems stuck between those who want to dismantle the public school system and those who would defend an indefensible status quo, between those who say money makes no difference in education and those who want more money without any demonstration that it will be put to good use.
No longer was environmental policy a matter of balancing sound stewardship of our natural resources with the demands of a modern economy; you either supported unchecked development, drilling, strip-mining, and the like, or you supported stifling bureaucracy and red tape that choked off growth.
In politics, if not in policy, simplicity was a virtue.
“We both got better than we deserve, Mr. President,”
Not so far beneath the surface, I think, we are becoming more, not less, alike.
Spend time actually talking to Americans, and you discover that most evangelicals are more tolerant than the media would have us believe, most secularists more spiritual.
Most rich people want the poor to succeed, and most of the poor are both more self-critical and hold higher aspirations than the popular culture allows.
Most Republican strongholds are 40 percent Democrat, and vice versa. The political labels of liberal and conservative rarely ...
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It is the language of values that people use to map their world. It is what can inspire them to take action, and move them beyond their isolation.
Unfortunately, too often in our national debates we don’t even get to the point where we weigh these difficult choices. Instead, we either exaggerate the degree to which policies we don’t like impinge on our most sacred values, or play dumb when our own preferred policies conflict with important countervailing values.
Values are faithfully applied to the facts before us, while ideology overrides whatever facts call theory into question.
Still, I know that as a consequence of my fund-raising I became more like the wealthy donors I met, in the very particular sense that I spent more and more of my time above the fray, outside the world of immediate hunger, disappointment, fear, irrationality, and frequent hardship of the other 99 percent of the population—that is, the people that I’d entered public life to serve.
The longer you are a senator, the narrower the scope of your interactions.
In an environment in which a single ill-considered remark can generate more bad publicity than years of ill-considered policies, it should have come as no surprise to me that on Capitol Hill jokes got screened, irony became suspect, spontaneity was frowned upon, and passion was considered downright dangerous.
In that sense, the episode hinted at a more subtle and corrosive aspect of modern media—how a particular narrative, repeated over and over again and hurled through cyberspace at the speed of light, eventually becomes a hard particle of reality; how political caricatures and nuggets of conventional wisdom lodge themselves in our brain without us ever taking the time to examine them.
Meanwhile, for busy and therefore casual news consumers, a well-worn narrative is not entirely unwelcome. It makes few demands on our thought or time; it’s quick and easy to digest. Accepting spin is easier on everybody.
Today’s politician understands this. He may not lie, but he understands that there is no great reward in store for those who speak the truth, particularly when the truth may be complicated. The truth may cause consternation; the truth will be attacked; the media won’t have the patience to sort out all the facts and so the public may not know the difference between truth and falsehood.
In all this I am encouraged by Michelle, although there are times when I get the sense that I’m encroaching on her space—that by my absences I may have forfeited certain rights to interfere in the world she has built.
As usual, my wife is right.
