Party loyalty vs. doing right

Wednesday, February 28, 2007

By Gary Trauner

While reading a recent interview in Newsweek with Vice President Dick Cheney, I was floored by his quote, “Let’s say I firmly believe in Ronald Reagan’s 11th Commandment: Thou shalt not speak ill of a fellow Republican.”

Wow. Is it really true that we should refrain from holding people accountable simply because of a party label? Should I have blindly supported Republicans Mark Foley and Duke Cunningham or Democrat William J. Jefferson just because they might have checked the same box I did when I registered to vote?

Our founding fathers foresaw this problem, and it worried them. Deeply. George Washington, in his farewell address in 1796, looked like a veritable fortuneteller. He said:
 
[Party] serves always to distract the public councils and enfeeble the public administration. It agitates the community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms, kindles the animosity of one part against another, foments occasionally riot and insurrection. It opens the door to foreign influence and corruption, which finds a facilitated access to the government itself through the channels of party passions ….

The biggest problem we have in our national government today is blind allegiance to party — on both sides. Even as Ronald Reagan and Tip O’Neill disagreed bitterly about policy, it was said they could enjoy a drink together after the workday.

Could the same be said today about any leading Republican and Democrat?

This has real consequences for those of  us in the West who are looking to government to act as a true partner in dealing with seemingly intractable issues: health care, energy development, balancing growth.

We are choosing leaders who value substance over slogan, people over party, like Dave Freudenthal in Wyoming, Brian Schweitzer in Montana and, yes, even Arnold Schwarzenegger in California (okay, in his second term).

They are not about personal attacks or cheap slogans like “cut and run,” “stay the course” or “socialized medicine.” They are interested in looking for solutions to complex issues.

During my 2006 run for Congress, I knocked on the door of a leader of the local Republican Party — let’s call her Mrs. Lincoln.

For 20 minutes, we had one of the best discussions of my entire campaign. We agreed that partisanship is not inherently bad — it allows like-minded people with similar philosophies to band together for support and to promote their views.

However, Mrs. Lincoln decried the blind and bitter partisanship she saw nationally, and even locally in her own party.

To illustrate her point, she asked if I thought Republicans were inherently stronger on national security. I did not. She then asked if I were to change parties tomorrow, would I be any stronger on national security as a Republican than as a Democrat.

The absurdity was immediately clear.

I have spent my career starting and growing small businesses. While every business should have a business plan, the dynamics of the free market usually force you at some point to review the plan.

Not listening to differing views or being open to new ideas will result in the harshest judgment the market can bestow — going out of business. A good business leader cannot afford to ignore market realities while holding to a rigid ideology; the same is true for our elected officials.

As George Washington foresaw, without people zealously guarding democracy by putting blindly partisan politicians out of business, we risk nothing less than the future of our nation.

I knocked on nearly 20,000 doors across Wyoming last year. The question I was asked most often was simple yet searing: “How do I know you’re not going to become one of them?” This question came from people across the economic and political spectrums — it did not mean Democrat or Republican or whatever. It meant professional D.C. politicians who had lost touch. It meant putting blind partisanship ahead of doing the right thing.

We Westerners pride ourselves on our independence of thought and spirit. We, the people, have it in our power to break the cycle of blind allegiance to party, to hold our elected officials to a higher standard. This is, after all, our nation.
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