2006 checked out with the departure of two great Americans: James Brown and President Gerald R. Ford. (They say famous people always die in threes. Would that make Saddam the third?) I will certainly miss the Godfather of Soul the most, but I was moved by the response to Ford's passing and the way it reminded us all of simpler times in politics, before partisanship trumped honest debate.
The remembrance made me long for an era before pundits and politicians figured out how to turn American against American, fooling us into believing we have more differences than common interests. Would it be too much to ask to get the Republican party back to political center? Somewhere in the neighborhood of Clinton. Bill was too centrist for my tastes (despite the absurd imagination of the wacko right, calling him liberal), but at least a majority of America's voters seemed represented rather than Bush's (dupped and increasingly remorseful) 51%. In a landscape of moderate politics nobody gets everything they want, but at least we do some real work on the issues we all agree on.
posted on Tuesday, January 02, 2007 9:26 PM