Can the Debate wait?

Can the Debate Wait?

Written by Dan McDonald

 

            Our government is in shut down mode. Some things run along as if nothing is wrong. But beneath the daily news shows that simply notice the debates there are the tens of thousands of government employees not being paid, and yet expected to continue working at their jobs. They live in no man’s land while the right and the left make their stands, sometimes because they simply must. The end isn’t as sure as we might suppose. Will one side blink? Will a grand compromise occur behind the scenes? Will a bit of face saving secrecy be followed while the appearance of defeat is suffered? Or will the unthinkable happen when the failure to reach compromise doesn’t take place and each side hardens until at last we discover that the breakdown of a civilized order we thought would not take place, has taken place?

            I have to admit that as I age, my tendency is to become less argumentative and more interested in finding a way to build general consensus. I am not sure this will happen in our present situation.

            One of the most followed new elected persons in the House of Representatives is Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, often simply described by her AOC initials. She is energetic, outspoken, a self-defined Socialist advocating a Scandinavian model of Socialism. She is also youngest woman ever elected to the House of Representatives. You might admire her or you might regard here as a threat to America. One new Republican Congressman, Dan Crenshaw, has expressed his desire to debate Ocasio-Cortez concerning her proposals. These two new representatives seem to represent the divisions of our fractured nation state. Crenshaw, the special forces soldier who has lost much of his eyesight due to his service in war, and Ocasio-Cortez looking for a way to move away from our continual wars. Crenshaw, a citizen connected to a region where the oil industry is part of the picture, and AOC, an advocate of green energy. It seems, in some ways, that these two newly elected representatives might do well to represent their positions in a debate. In some ways they would well represent the divided of ideas separating right and left.

            I feel like an American traditionalist torn apart in our present times. I am part rugged individualist progressive in the mode of Theodore Roosevelt, part pragmatic New Deal progressive in the likeness of Franklin Roosevelt, part Conservative get back to our roots Ronald Reagan; and part dare to hope progressivism of a Barack Obama. I would like to ask Ocasio-Cortez and Crenshaw to dare to do something original before they debate.

            I would propose the two first term representatives host each other in the districts they represent. I don’t expect it would change either Representative’s basic governmental philosophies. Still, I think the visiting of each other’s district might be in some ways productive.

            Ocasio-Cortez would take Congressman Crenshaw to some places in her district. She might take him to a diner or a restaurant where she thinks Congressman Crenshaw could get a feel for her district. She could take him to a place where she feels well represents some of the good her district offers to the rest of America. She could also take him to a place that needs a sense of hope to encourage people to discover a way to grow out of the economic or societal doldrums that have set in. Congressman Crenshaw could then return the favor by hosting AOC in his Houston area district. Perhaps each Congressional representative would better understand how their political perspectives relate to their personal political theories. Such an experiment might change nothing, or might change something. I think I would expect a minimally realistic hope that at least some empathy for the other person’s congressional district might occur. Perhaps there might be the sort of realization that former Speaker Tip O’Neill understood about life when he would say that all politics is local. Perhaps something about the Bronx would help Congressman Crenshaw understand Ortega-Cortez better, and something of seeing Crenshaw’s Houston district would help AOC better understand Dan Crenshaw’s politics. They would still have their own ideas and political commitments, but would it hurt or help each other if they took the time to spend some time with the other representative in each other’s district?

            I think this way, because I was once a kid growing up in a farm area. For most of my life, I thought of New York City as a place foreign to my way of life. Then one day, as I wanted to see something other than the way in which I lived, I decided it was time to visit New York City. My first visit was for three days. A brief conversation at a sports restaurant and bar with a cordial waitress helped insure me that New Yorkers could be kind and compassionate. I went to New York my first time expecting a wholly other worldly experience of that big eastern city. I returned realizing that New York City was a multitude of small communities connected by subways, street systems, and bus routes.

            I returned to this city that I discovered fascinated me the following summer. I decided to visit the city for three weeks. I decided I would see at least two things in each of New York City’s five boroughs. In the Bronx, I first visited the Bronx Zoo. I learned the zoo had helped pioneer some of the breeding programs for animals threatened with extinction. The zoo had a number of bison. There are some bison herds in my home state of Oklahoma. An information board described how a breeding program by the Bronx Zoo in the early twentieth century helped to restore the bison herds in Oklahoma that had been all but wiped out. It was an amazing thing for me, now a resident of Oklahoma, to realize that some or many of our bison in Oklahoma had a Bronx connection.

            Later in the day I went from the zoo in search of an Italian restaurant in an area of the Bronx’s version of a “Little Italy.” On the way to the restaurant I got my directions turned around and found myself blocks away from the Little Italy I was seeking. I was in an area where I seemed a conspicuously white looking person in an African-American area of the city. As a rural Midwesterner in my growing up times, it was a different world than I had known. I was out of my comfort zone, although nothing negative actually occurred. I wandered trying to get back to the area where I thought I would find a nice Italian restaurant in the Little Italy section of the Bronx. Instead I found an area, where people appeared to be speaking mostly Spanish. I began to realize that in a few blocks within the Bronx, a seemingly whole different world existed if your life had always been lived in rural or suburban white neighborhoods. I don’t think I was ready for the experience at the time, even though upon reflection it was encouraging that nothing really negative had occurred. I had simply found myself outside of my comfort zone, and the people I saw seemed to be enjoying being in the place of their comfort zones.

            Finally I was standing near Fordham University, a place more obvious on my New York City map. From there I could begin to more easily figure out how to get to a Little Italy restaurant not far from Belmont Avenue, where once upon a time a group of guys from that are formed a band called Dion and the Belmonts. It was a rainy, Monday evening. The restaurant was not busy. The phone rang. The owner picked it up and began conversing in Italian. This was New York City. This was in the borough of the Bronx. Why would I think a political representative of this district would somehow be a carbon copy of a representative from the oil patch states, or from my original rural life in downstate Illinois? Wouldn’t it somehow be strangely appropriate if before two representatives debated one another on issues, they each hosted each other in their districts? They would still have different political solutions for national politics, but just perhaps they would be more interested than before in realizing that what one district needed might not be what another district needed.