Governing … vs … - - - -!

Sometimes Conversations Produce Moments of Clarity …

I was just talking to my daughter-in-law about an experience I had many years ago. My little family lived in New Jersey at the time, and I was on the board of directors for a non-profit, volunteer ambulance service in my town in the somewhat “rural” western part of the state.

At one particular board meeting, we had to solve a problem: It seemed like another squad might be jumping our calls, and we needed to come up with a solution for handling emergencies in areas adjacent to the border of our territories. Solving what seemed to be happening was not as simple as just putting them on notice to stop answering calls in our region … we needed to know WHY it might be happening, too, and whether a solution might include redrawing maps, or changing our policies. The best interest of people in need were paramount, after all, not our supposed claim on any particular “emergency.“

I showed up at the meeting with an idea that I thought was logical and functional. I expected others to recognize it as such. Hmmmm. Turns out some had positive reactions to my idea, but some also saw areas for improvement. Others had ideas of their own. Wow, my sense of my own logic had to make way for seeing THEIR valid ideas. Good wake-up call. Open my mind.

I was young and a new mother in a fairly new town, just learning my way around social advocacy and civic action, and I realized that THIS — having ideas, presenting them, hearing other people’s responses, hearing other people’s ideas, hashing out what needs to be done, understanding shared goals and the different ways we might get to those goals, recognizing the function of compromise and cooperation without abandoning shared values, respecting each other’s integrity in the process — this was all part of GOVERNING. {We were governing our little part of a town’s social system, in part supported by town funds, so we were part of the town’s public life, even though an independent organization.}

So, here I was, having an epiphany: THIS was what was meant by “hammering out” solutions to problems, working with multiple opinions and constituencies and being open to ideas.

And such a process has always been what our national “bi-partisan” process was supposed to be about.

That learning experience happened for me in the mid-1970s. Our local and state and national governments were still expected to function in that manner: Get together. Present issues. Hash out ideas. Find common ground. Find solutions that people can live with, even support.

That was GOVERNING.

Then came the Heritage Society and the Federalist Society at the dawn of the Reagan era, with its “zero sum” contingent. Reagan wasn’t the architect of any of this, but he was the tool, They re-defined the role of legislators to “win” by making the opposition “lose.”

Newt Gingrich was a strong proponent of this attitude. It took over the Republican Party, and during the intervening years, it helped to polarize our body politic, getting us to here … Polarized. “La-la-la! I can’t hear you” to anything anyone says that does not agree with our side’s “Chapter and Verse.” Selling the idea that compromise is capitulation, and anything but outright victory must be defeat.

SO, while talking to my daughter-in-law about that long-ago epiphany, I drew a line from that day talking over how we would govern our ambulance squad—learning to hear and consider a range of ideas, realizing mine was not the only way to handle a problem — to today’s typical Washington attitude of “My Way or the Highway.”

But, “My Way or the Highway” is not GOVERNING.

It’s RULING.

We are at a time in the life of our democracy now when we might take a good look at what we want GOVERNING to be about. We might think about people like Kamala Harris, Tim Walz, Adam Kinzinger, and even Liz Cheney … and people even more liberal or more conservative than they all are! … and consider how they might get in a room and TALK to each other, find common goals, consider bedrock values and ideals and ethics, and find ways to govern our country again.

We might want a chance for us — We the People — to elect such people to represent us, and to govern.

We do NOT need, nor do we want, someone to RULE.

We need and want people to GOVERN.

{Let’s see if we can still find a way to get back to there from here … |