Perils of Partisanship
[NB: I wrote this letter to the editor about ten days ago and sent it to the Spokesman-Review. They contacted me, seeking permission to publish it, but it hasn’t appeared yet. So, I’m sharing here. If it appears on the newspaper’s website, I’ll link it.]
In her recent appearance on Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Birthday, Representative Cathy McMorris Rodgers pleaded for unity. It is a common call. President Bush pledged to be a “uniter, not a divider,” and President Obama followed suit. The bipartisan public is weary of the deeply divided, dysfunctional political system.
bother to look and listen. Yet, reconciling the successive, overlapping, or competing pasts in one place can confound the historically inclined. It did me on a visit to the