Eight years ago, the Aspen Institute initiated a new fellowship program designed to counter the nasty partisanship that had seeped into the political system. It was not our goal to create some form of magical political “center”; democracy depends on vigorous debate and we expected conservatives and liberals to hold firm to their principles, as they should.But we did want to bring together those political leaders, left, right, and center, who were willing to listen to the other side and see whether there were areas where they could find common ground in the national interest. That first class of Fellows included a great mix of the best young political leaders we could find, beginning with Gabby Giffords, who was then a Democratic state legislator in Arizona; Jon Bruning, the conservative Republican attorney general of Nebraska; Michael Steele, who became the national chairman of the Republican Party; two who have since become Republican members of Congress (Erik Paulsen and Lynn Jenkins) … and Tom Perez, then the president of the Montgomery County Council in Maryland.
It’s understandable that Senate conservatives would prefer a secretary of Labor whose views are more closely in line with their own. But a Democrat won the presidency and his Cabinet will naturally reflect views similar to his. Presidents are not automatically entitled to have their nominees confirmed but it is an abuse of the Senate’s constitutional prerogatives to reject a nominee simply because he shares the president’s views rather than those of the minority party.
What one ought to look for in any department head is character, intelligence, integrity, fair-dealing, an openness to competing viewpoints – in other words, somebody who will serve not just the president but the nation. I have known and worked with Tom Perez for nearly a decade now. I have watched him in countless interactions with men and women whose political views are very different from his own. And I have seen the tremendous respect he has engendered from highly-regarded public officials representing the entire range of political philosophies.
If Perez had been a member of Congress during my years as a member of the House Republican leadership, it’s almost certain that we would have disagreed on a number of important issues. But I would have had confidence that Tom and I could sit down together, talk about our differences, and work to find ways to move forward together in the best interests of the country we both love. It wouldn’t always be a successful effort but it would always be an honest one.
It’s time for members of the Senate, Republican and Democrat alike, to stop engaging in knee-jerk hostility to anybody who carries the other party’s label: if a nominee for a Cabinet position is lacking in the ability to do the job or unwilling to consider divergent views, he or she might well merit a vote against confirmation. But that most assuredly is not the case with Tom Perez. He will enforce the nation’s labor laws with fairness and integrity and that’s exactly what we should want in the head of any government department. He understands what it takes to be an effective Labor Secretary, because he has done the job successfully at a state level.
The support he has received from business leaders, educators, unions, and grassroots leaders is an impressive but not surprising illustration of the Tom Perez I have seen in action. He’s not a conservative but he deserves confirmation and the country deserves to have him sitting in the president’s Cabinet and bringing his judgment and intellect to the collective management of the nation’s business.
Mickey Edwards is director of the Aspen Institute and was a Republican member of Congress from Oklahoma for 16 years (1977-92).blockquote>
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In No Labels‘ inaugural Google+ Hangout, The RP led a discussion with Congressmen Ami Bera, David Cicilline, Rodney Davis and Adam Kinzinger, talking about their involvement with the Problem Solvers group in Congress — the only place in Washington where lawmakers from both sides of the aisle are coming together to talk solutions. Watch below: Check it out — Problem Solver Reps. Ami Bera, David Cicilline, Adam Kinzinger and Rodney Davis want you to join them in a video town hall with No Labels today at 5 p.m., eastern time! Click here to view the livestream.
Don’t miss it — this is your chance to hear what happens when two Republicans and two Democrats sit down to discuss real solutions instead of relying on party politics. Click here to join the hangout, and submit your questions for the congressmen.
I’m honored to moderate a conversation with Reps. Ami Bera, David Cicilline, Rodney Davis and Adam Kinzinger in a Google+ Hangout as they discuss how they’re working together in the No Labels Problem Solvers group. This video discussion is the only place where you can hear the facts on what is happening in Washington, not just the party talking points. Will you join us TODAY at 5 p.m., eastern time, to watch the Problem Solvers talk No Labels? Click here to RSVP for the exclusive, live event. These lawmakers are just four of the 61 Problem Solvers in Congress — but they can give you an inside look at what goes on in these meetings. This has never happened before — you won’t want to miss it. And they’d love to hear from you. Sure, California has lots of advantages – fabulous weather, beautiful scenery, and being on the cutting edge of everything from computer innovation to right-turn-on-red. But there are plenty of drawbacks, besides the obvious (cost-of-living and housing prices are insane, New Yorkers like my father-in-law refer to our home as ‘the land of fruits and nuts’). And one of the biggest problems here is political. Granted, I’m grateful to live in a state where my kids aren’t taught creationism in science class, or where I don’t worry that a personhood amendment is going to make my birth control pills illegal. But when lunacy happens on the federal level, there’s often not much I can do. For example, many people were horrified by last week’s Senate vote, blocking watered-down background checks on gun purchases (that were supported by 80-90% of all voters – one of the rare occasions where WTF? is a totally appropriate reaction). All the left-leaning organizations tell us we’re supposed to contact our senators and representatives and give them hell. But what do I do when my legislators are all very liberal women? I mean, am I supposed to call Dianne Feinstein and complain that the assault weapons ban, which SHE sponsored, hasn’t gotten further? That’s like the old borscht belt joke about the Jewish mother at a Catskills resort, complaining that the food was “just awful, I couldn’t eat a bite, and besides, the portions were so small!” And while I am grateful to California innovators for all the advances in computers and internet connectivity, now I can’t pretend to be from another state. I get emails saying “Let Senator so-and-so know you’re angry about the background checks vote” and when I call the number, something in the system figures out what my zip code is and redirects me to Barbara Boxer’s office voicemail. I mean, technology is great, but that feels a little creepy to me, especially when I was getting really good at imitating a southern accent. So to all my friends in red states who envy us in more liberal parts of the country, at least you can make some noise, and possibly some difference, by contacting your legislators. And trust me, I know your pain, I grew up in Orange County, which I like to think of as the red state in the middle of California. I was one of two students in my entire high school trying to drum up support for McGovern . . . . . and before you whip out your calculators, yes, I’m old, but not THAT old, it was my freshman year and I was only 13 and I can’t lie about my age because my teenage sons are good at math and lousy at keeping secrets . . . . oh never mind, here’s a song about being blue in a blue state: Last week, the US Senate voted 54-46 to strengthen gun safety laws in America. It failed. That’s right. 54%–a solid majority of the US Senate–voted in favor of universal background checks, and the bill still lost. Because the filibuster rule requires a 60% vote for anything to pass. Which made me think about Elizabeth Warren. You will recall that Ms. Warren carried her reform message together with everybody’s highest hopes into the halls of congress. Shortly after her election–I received an email from her. This is what she said:
Neither did Jeff Merkle, nor any other senator—Democrat or Republican. And by fight, I mean rise to their feet on the floor of the Senate and use the filibuster to change the filibuster. Bring that shameful institution to a screeching halt on behalf of majority rule. Stop everything. Force a national conversation on why—in the “world’s greatest deliberative body”–a simple majority isn’t enough. Why–after 20 kids got their heads blown off—doesn’t 54% of Senators voting in favor of gun safety legislation advance that bill to the next step? I’d like Ms. Warren, and Mr. Reid, and the Democratic majority in the United States Senate to explain to the parents of those twenty dead six year olds, why protecting the filibuster is so much more important than protecting our children? Read the rest of… The other day I was interviewed about who I thought run in the 2015 Governor’s race. Here is an answer I fleshed out that didn’t get quoted but I re-read it and liked. “As fun as it is to speculate about who will run for governor in 2015 and who will be the strongest candidates, it is more art than science and more about personal timing than politcal timing. At bottom, running for governor is an irrational decision. One morning you wake up and decide to run because you can’t not run. It is a leap of faith. One of the boldest leaps of faith a mortal can ever take who is also politically inclined. And especially in Kentucky. Where it is two parts political and one part horse race.
It is, in these candidate types, as if they were born with invisible wings. And like any animal blessed with wings, there will come a day when it is time to try to fly. And they jump.”
I’m honored to moderate a conversation with Reps. Ami Bera, David Cicilline, Rodney Davis and Adam Kinzinger in a Google+ Hangout as they discuss how they’re working together in the No Labels Problem Solvers group. This video discussion is the only place where you can hear the facts on what is happening in Washington, not just the party talking points. Will you join us on Wednesday at 5 p.m., eastern time, to watch the Problem Solvers talk No Labels? Click here to RSVP for the exclusive, live event. These lawmakers are just four of the 61 Problem Solvers in Congress — but they can give you an inside look at what goes on in these meetings. This has never happened before — you won’t want to miss it. And they’d love to hear from you. See you Wednesday! Jonathan Give the New Republic’s Adam Winkler credit for laying some of the blame for the collapse of background checks on gun sales not just on NRA sophistry but on a poorly executed, badly timed, overly polarizing campaign by the Obama Administration. As Winkler points out, the over-reach of going after an assault weapon ban boomeranged badly, serving only to galvanize opposition and define even incremental regulations as a wedge to confiscate guns. And the virtues of a go-for-broke strategy, whatever they were, never compensated for the fact that no assault weapons ban had even a remote chance of passing the House. I would add an additional point that goes much deeper than tactics and the debate over guns. To a degree that could not have been anticipated, and seems doubly odd for a reelected president, Barack Obama smothers his own initiatives. He has the capacity to lend eloquence to his own followers’ views, but no demonstrated ability to organize them behind any cause other than putting him in office. He moves literally no sector of the electorate that didn’t vote for him. His intervention in a legislative fight seems good primarily for preserving gridlock. Obama wins elections but through pathways that close quickly and elevate few specific policy aims: in 2008, a backlash against George Bush’s unpopularity and an airy promise of a post-racial society, and in 2012, a relentlessly negative siege against Mitt Romney. And the country that has elected Obama twice is still split to the core, more so today than when he was a senator signing book contracts. And the deepest splits are more around the country’s perception of Obama than around any singular issue.
It is not too early to wonder if Obama a generation from now looks weirdly like, of all people, Margaret Thatcher: a highly effective campaigner whose victories spun off the unintended consequence of an entrenched cultural opposition, and whose “conviction politics” seem like a relic. Twenty plus years after Thatcherism formally ended, it has been supplanted by a run of center-leaning British prime ministers with a penchant for downplaying sharp ideological rifts. It is not hard to imagine that Obama’s successors won’t be similarly preoccupied with navigating away from the intense divisions of the Obama era. Read the rest of…
Who knows what this tortured week in Boston means for the future? After all, the hunting down and killing of Osama Bin Laden hardly lifted America out of the morass that has distorted politics for the better part of five years, not even a little bit. There was agony at the shooting and maiming of a congresswoman while she was attending to her constituents, and the misery of knowing that a child died that day while on an outing to see democracy in action. Those tears haven’t washed any of the anger out of our campaigns, and they haven’t slowed down the denigration of public service. But permit me one burst of wishful thinking. It goes like this. If only the fanaticism of two brothers who twisted themselves into killers would remind us that America faces threats worse than anything our left or right fear of each other. If only the intensity of the Tsarnaev brothers’ hatred makes the values we clash over, from immigration to gun laws to the weight of government, seem not unimportant but not worth surrendering our civility over, either.
If only we could savor one moment, let it be the faces in the crowds gathering in Watertown to celebrate a return to the ideal of being safe in one’s own home. I spent enough time as a student in metropolitan Boston to know that the blacks and whites and browns, and Catholics and Arabs and Jews don’t ordinarily mix so easily on those streets after dark. They often clutch their purses and roll up their car windows, and clench when they see each other. What a striking thing to watch them unclench their mutual suspicions for even a little while. It only took two bad seeds to make those gritty, divided neighborhoods re-imagine the meaning of “us” and “them.” (A version of this essay was cross-published at Ricochet.com) |
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