Across the Aisle

Yesterday at Wal-Mart, Jerry T was a bell-ringer for Salvation Army at the front door. On my way out, he asked me what I thought of Bob Gates at Defense and I said, “Why sure, that’s all right.” He wanted to tease me about it, so he said, “Oh yeah, I bet!” and grinned. I said, “You don’t watch Fox News, do you?” He considered it and said, “No, not much. I listen to some public radio in the car.” I said, “You’re too intelligent to watch Fox News!” I said it for the audience of two men with him, whom I surmised were fellow Republicans, wishing to make my point to the world that FOX NEWS SUCKS.

But I also wanted to praise Jerry, whom I’ve always figured was a moderate, thoughtful Republican, probably not enthusiastic about George W. Bush with his big-government-in-order-to-trash-government Norquists and Wolfowitz-Cheney neocons and Gonzales-Brownie corrupt-incompetents. Jerry and I have never talked politics, or much of anything else, for that matter, his having been the CEO of the outfit for which I was one of the grunts, our just chatting being restricted by time and protocol.

Jerry has me pretty well pegged as a liberal, progressive, “lefty,” and as such, he figured, I would be affronted by the likes of Gates, a leftover from the Bush administration, being kept on - that I would be mollified by nothing less than good riddance to all remnants of the past eight years, especially the people.

On the contrary. I’d be quite happy to see a move of both parties to the “center” – if both could get back to some of our old values: one being that government of, by, and for the people can be a force for good if we believe in it; that we are a government of laws, not men; that people in this nation who want to “drown government in the bathtub” are not patriots but robber barons; that if we try to reconcile our differences and work together – “across the aisle” - we can solve some of the terrible problems we have brought upon ourselves and thereby save our republic. Saving this nation is not Democratic or Republican. It's patriotic.