Two Horses Pulling the Cart. One at Each End?

Are BOTH the Republican and Democrat Party pulling the cart forward? With apologies to many local Republicans who are working hard to make the world a better place.

When you hitch one horse to the front and the other to the back of the cart, pointing in opposite directions, the cart is unlikely to make much progress.

Neutral observers MIGHT view the current struggles within the Democratic Party as a balky horse trying to get things done.  A little more of this, a little less than that.  Pushing, and pulling and trying to get the needle to move.  They look like people discovering the role of government in a world where technology has improved our ability to effect changes and where serious problems have made such changes even more necessary. 

Such observers, if truly neutral, will question whether the Biden administration is finding the right solutions, but they won’t doubt that efforts are being made. And the cart is moving forward. A bit.

And then they look at today’s Republican Party. Do they see much more than obstruction designed to win future elections? 

This may not be entirely fair.  Republicans will say that they focus on getting elected because they have better plans for progress in the future.  They don’t want the cart to move until their horse is in front.

Fair enough, although they appear to be saying a lot more about what is “wrong” with the Democratic Party’s office holders than what they would do if in power.  It even appears that they would delay changes that they see as good right now (and which improve, even save, lives) just so the other side doesn’t get credit for successes.  

Yes, the other party might do the same, and has, when out of power. But the urgency of the moment forces us to consider the present.

I know that political parties are organizations that seek power through elections.  But winning elections involves (or could involve) using good arguments to challenge the other Party’s policies, and good reasons for one’s own.  And finding common ground.

This is not an attack on Republicans in general or on the many conservatives that are searching for a partisan “home.” It is, however, a “calling out” of many of our present leaders — both Republican and Democrat.

I challenge us all to consider a different view of partisanship. Democracy can be a positive not a negative force. Opposition can be positive. Why not challenge the Party in power for what they are not doing, for what they could achieve? Potentially opposition could be a call to do better, to do more. An opposition of imagination envisions a society that offers a higher standard of living for those that have been left behind, a sounder transformation to a greener world, an economy that provides health, education and opportunity for every child, an economy that fully funds research and sees new ideas developed and commercialized, or provided as public goods.

In such a world the second horse pulls with the first. Perhaps slowing down, for cautions sake, the speed of the cart. Perhaps, forcing a better, if parallel path. We can’t wait until the next election to take advantages of opportunities and respond to threats.

Summing up. All of us need to support and reward leaders of either party who commit to real and current solutions to problems. We don’t need political parties, whether led by Democrats or Republicans, which focus on making the other look bad and puts winning the next election ahead of better government policies today.

We are Americans, that has always meant we respect and listen to each other. At our best we work together, with daring and imagination. Recall John Kennedy’s call to reach the moon:

“We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win.”