Moving Forward

I've just been letting the Tuesday election returns sit for a bit. I can't change them. I can only move forward. The election post-mortem is always filled with conciliatory statements which will be followed a few days later by finger pointing and sniping. Never our best moment as a collective society.

Mitch McConnell said today that his number one goal is to get Obama out of office in 2012 so that he can advance the Republican agenda. I get that politics is a contest and I get that we disagree. But winning has become everything and moving forward has left the equation. I get that the R's don't like the Health Care bill, but to suggest that they must repeal it is just folly. A great many people in this country want Health Care reform. Why can't we accept at least part of it and move forward. When George Bush said we had to go to war, many people protested, but when we went to war people acknowledged it and said lets find a way forward. The fact that politics in this country is becoming intractable is a scary thought. We rely on our political process and our constitutional system to work. I don't know that we would get through Watergate in 2010.

Now that the national elections are over we can turn our full attention to local KC elections in February. We should know who's running in another week or so and rumors are flying about who will be in and who will not run. While the elections are great sport, we have to look at how the city will be governed after the election. If we have district and city-wide bloodbath battles, what will be the way forward? The mayor said in his latest news release or newsletter that Jeff Roe was the best political consultant in the world. Was the mayor pandering to republican voters? Is he willing to write off democratic party loyalists? Do I care? NO. I want to know what the Mayor has to say about what he has done and how he is going to move the city forward. On that he seems to be less sure.

I hope that candidates will be pressed for their position on governance as much as their position on issues. Platitudes of cooperation ain't gonna cut it. I want to know where the rubber meets the road and what that looks like to them. Otherwise, it won't matter who is elected.