The greatest
danger in our presidential campaign is the divisiveness and even potential climate
of violence being fostered. But the second greatest danger is that issues have
been hijacked almost completely out of the campaign as the press and political
community have little choice but to react to and denounce one outrage after
another.
What mandate
will our next president have to enact specific policies and programs if
policies and programs are not being seriously discussed? How can we discern and assess competing ideas
for fixing our schools, addressing hunger and poverty, rebuilding the nation’s
infrastructure, combatting terrorism? The president we inaugurate in 2017 is much
more likely to be effective in creating change if voters endorse such change
beforehand, not merely default to who they see as the less dangerous of the
two.
What a shame it
would be, given the great challenges facing our nation – and especially the
desperate needs of the most vulnerable and voiceless of our fellow citizens:
the hungry, homeless, impoverished - for our next president to have spent years
and a hundreds of millions of dollars in pursuit of the office and then get
there without a clear mandate from the public to get specific things done
starting on day one.
If there’s a
silver lining in the dark cloud hanging over our presidential campaign it is
the possibility that the growing backlash to crossing every boundary of
civilized discourse and decency actually unites the country in ways that
nothing else could. Each day now sees
more long-serving public servants, past and present, many of them Republican, putting
nation ahead of party. That needs to happen
on both sides of the aisle, now and in the next White House. It needs to emerge as our new national ethic.
If it does, even for a short while, there are no limits to what we can
accomplish.
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