If there is any
lesson from the past 6 months it’s that anything can happen in American
politics and, as Morgan Freeman says at the end of the film Feast Of Love, “the
unexpected is always upon us.” So while no one can predict what the next
12 weeks will bring, one possibility is that Donald Trump will unify the
country – to support Hillary Clinton - in ways that never could have been
imagined. We are already starting to see indications – in the
endorsements of Secretary Clinton by a Republican Congressman, by former CIA
Director Morrell, by Hewlett Packard’s Meg Whitman. More will soon
follow.
The opportunity for Secretary Clinton, if she can rise to the occasion, is to
put partisanship aside in the same way that some Republicans are beginning to
do, and to convey a vision of how she would govern with national unity as a
first priority, as opposed to the partisanship that that has all but paralyzed
Washington for many years (Congress’s failure to provide Zika funding as
the latest disconcerting example).
Should such a “unity Administration” come to pass, it wouldn’t last forever,
that’s just not the way of the world, but there could be a window early
on in which some big things could get done – especially on behalf of those who
engender bipartisanship in the first place: America’s kids. Such a
scenario – admittedly only one of many that could unfold between now and
election day including the possibility of quite the opposite - adds
urgency to our own efforts to develop, and work with others on, a bold and
broad policy agenda that addresses childhood hunger and the child poverty that
underlies it. Ever the optimist….
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