Out in Greene County, Iowa

Is anybody else feeling this? Is there a new consensus stirring in politics & government?

By CHUCK OFFENBURGER
February 5, 2010
COOPER, IOWA

I’ve got a feeling there’s something a little different stirring in politics and government right now.

And I feel it stirring in me, too.

It’s actually an awakening to an old idea – that we’ve all got to do a better job of getting along together, of being able to discuss our different positions, realizing that in many cases that we’ll just have to agree to disagree, but then be able to continue working together to solve the serious problems our communities, states and nations face.

Could it be?

Maybe I’m just imagining that I’m hearing my old teachers from Shenandoah whispering in my ear about how politics and government are supposed to work – history teachers George Haws and Bob Bender, American government teacher Muriel Keenan. Or maybe I’m getting softer as I get older. Or, hell, maybe it’s my anti-cancer drugs.

But it seems real, and it seems new.

We’ve certainly seen enough evidence in the past six months – especially in all the arguing over health care reform – that bashing away at each other doesn’t get anything accomplished. What have we got to show from all that hullabaloo?

A BREAK-THROUGH IN BALTIMORE? I really got excited last Friday, January 29, when President Barack Obama, who you’d have to admit is an embattled president right now, went to Baltimore for that public discussion with the Republican members of the U.S. House. They invited him to the retreat they were having. Yeah, it was a little contentious, as anybody would expect it to be. And yeah, maybe the president had a media advantage there, but any U.S. president has a media advantage wherever he goes – unless he does a meltdown and lets it become a media nightmare.

Who’s the quickest in the Iowa press corps when it comes to “tweeting” from live news events?

February 5, 2010

Terry Branstad, the former governor of Iowa who is running for the office again after a 12-year hiatus, was speaking Thursday morning, February 4, in the southeast Iowa town of Sigourney. There reporting on the campaign stop was Kathie Obradovich, the political columnist for the Des Moines Register. Besides using her recording device to catch all of Branstad’s remarks, Obradovich was also “tweeting” the speech, meaning she was posting brief reports on Twitter, one of the online social networking programs. Each “tweet” is limited to 140 characters, so the posts have to be short ’n’ snappy. Some tweeters do that using a cell phone that has Internet capability, some do it using a laptop or desktop computer with a connection to the ’Net. I use Twitter all the time. You pick what tweeters you want to “follow,” and so I’ve chosen to follow news reporters like Obradovich and many others across the U.S., as well as several Iowa newsmakers in politics, government and sports. I happened to check Twitter Thursday morning, just as Obradovich was starting her posts of the Branstad event at the Copper Lantern restaurant in Sigourney. She started just before he arrived, setting the scene with quick descriptions of the room and the 30 or so people there anticipating his arrival. About 55 minutes later, he was all done there, except for handshakes on his way out the door. So, by my count, Obradovich tweeted 39 times in those 55 minutes. But even more impressive, in the 30 minutes that Branstad was actually speaking and answering questions, she tweeted 33 times – more than once a minute. She was posting the candidate’s words almost as fast as they came out of his mouth. How does she do that so quickly? And has she seen anybody in the Iowa press corps who tweets quicker than she does? “I use a laptop with a USB wireless connection,” Obradovich answered by e-mail, later in the day. “I’m way too slow on a cell phone. Here’s my secret: I compose tweets in a Word document and paste the text into Twitter. I discovered that method at a public hearing at the Statehouse last year when the connection was agonizingly slow. I’ve gotten pretty good at eyeballing the character count. “I have no idea if anyone tweets faster than I do,” she continued. “Never checked! I have to ask you, is it annoying to have so many tweets? I’ve never had anyone tell me to knock it off, but I’ve wondered about that. I guess I just like to give people as much of a sense of being there live as I can, given the limitations of the 140-character format.” She said she does “use a recorder, always. I use the tweets like I would any other kind of notes. There are a lot of direct quotes there, but also plenty of paraphrase. You don’t get a lot of context from the tweets, so when I blog, I have to fill in some of that.” Her last comment refers to a “blog” story she wrote about the event after it ended, then posting it on the Des Moines Register’s site on the Internet. Then the grist of the blog might wind up as a whole or partial column in a subsequent print edition of the Register. Oh, and it’s not just reporters who tweet from news events. One of Iowa’s active tweeters is U.S. Senator Charles Grassley! - Chuck Offenburger

I didn’t watch the session on TV, but I heard audio clips, and I read lots of news stories, analyses and blogs about it. That’s left me thinking there may be some new understanding and respect, among those who were there, and among their allies who followed what happened.

However, I was concerned in the following days when I saw not a line or a peep about the reactions of our two Iowans who are Republican members of the House – Congressmen Tom Latham and Steve King.

My goodness, I thought, surely they attended. But I did decide to check. I am relieved to be able to report that indeed they were there.

And?

Latham was happier with the proceedings than King was.

“I honestly believe that there was a break-through in Baltimore,” Latham told me in a phone chat on Wednesday. “I was very pleased that the president accepted our invitation, and I think he came over there in good faith. One big thing that I think happened there is that he actually acknowledged that we Republicans have offered some ideas and proposals. We’d kept hearing the other side telling us we hadn’t offered anything. But the president said he’s studied the ideas we’ve offered and taken them under serious consideration.

“I really think that the president, if it was just up to him, would work well with both sides,” Latham continued. “But the Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi has just not been open to that. She has really tried to block us out of the process.”

FEELING BULLIED BY THE BULLY PULPIT. King, in a chat Tuesday, said the format of the televised discussion was “very favorable to the president and not very favorable to our side, that’s for sure. He’s got the bully pulpit, as the president always does, and he’s got members of Congress sitting in front of him and, with only a few questions allowed, not really able to challenge him.

“He kept coming back to this line of his that the Republicans don’t have much of a negotiating position,” King continued. “I got the sense he was seeking to marginalize us.”

And yet, King offered this: “I’m trying not to be overly partisan about it. Let me say that I like President Obama, I really do. His mannerisms, his personality. He’s warm and relaxed, and he’s got a good sense of humor. When he was a senator, there were a couple of occasions when we were both in a group working on some measure, and I could work with him. I would by no means say I’m a close friend, but I do think I can have a good working relationship with him.”

King took issue with Obama’s statements during that “I am not an ideologue” and that “I’m a centrist.”

King: “I’m not sure this president could argue successfully that he’s an ideologue, and there’s no way at all that he is a centrist.”

On health care reform, King said “we lost some ground in Baltimore,” because of what he saw as the president’s control of the format and content of the discussion. “But I went to Massachusetts and spent Sunday, Monday and Tuesday before (Republican) Scott Brown’s election, and maybe I have a different perspective from what I heard from people there. I think the Obama-Pelosi-Reid foundation for that bill is dead. I really think it is.” (The “Reid” there is Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.)

“They’re looking to see what they can resurrect from it – some things they can get passed so they’ve got something to show for it all,” King continued. “But while we may have lost some ground in Baltimore, and we may be behind on the scoreboard right now, we’ve got the ball and we’re playing offense. That bill is a toxic stew, which they’re trying to serve to us by the pot-full or bowl-full, and Americans don’t even want a spoonful of it.”

FINDING THE COMMON GROUND. Both King and Latham pointed out that there is some common ground among Democrats and Republicans on health care reform – tort reform, insurance reform, Medicare adjustments, better cost control – and that’s where there can be cooperation on legislation for significant change.

Latham: “The objection a lot of us have to what’s been proposed, is that it’s a total intrusion of the federal government into health care, when there are free-market solutions to a lot of these problems.”

But let’s move now from that discussion, back to look more broadly at politics and government.

I think Latham pegged things well in his statement, three days before Baltimore, in which he reacted to President Obama’s State of the Union address. First, he was critical of Obama saying he wanted to get spending and the national debt under control. “I think Americans will be skeptical of any such proposals from a president who spent more taxpayer dollars in his first year than any other president in history.” The congressman did not acknowledge the monumental and immediate problems that awaited new-President Obama.

But forget my quibble with that. It was the second paragraph of Latham’s statement that I really liked.

“The time for political maneuvering, partisanship and broken promises from Washington is over,” Latham said. “The leaders of this nation must join together for the benefit of the entire country and the American people, to find common-sense solutions that provide long-term economic security, job security and homeland security for every American. I stand ready to work with the White House and my Democratic and Republican colleagues in Congress to achieve results that will move our country forward again.”

Amen. That’s it. We all need to make that happen.

SO HOW CAN ALL OF US BACK HOME HELP? There’s much more to it than just saying “Kumbaya!” and “Can’t we all get along?”

Here’s how I’m going to try to help, and I’d like to hear your ideas on this, too:

– I don’t want anybody who is going to represent me in the Greene County Courthouse, the State Capitol, the White House or the U.S. Capitol to be saying that they’re “fighting” for me. I want real negotiation, fair compromise and effective bi-partisan action on meaningful legislation. Quit fighting.

– When I hear candidates campaigning for any office that is partisan, I intend to start asking, “How well can you work with people in the other party? Have you done that in the past? Do you have friends you enjoy and admire who are in the other party?” If I get negative answers to those three questions, I won’t support them.

– When I hear candidates or office holders staking out a very strong position on some issue – and it’s important that they have some strong beliefs – I will also want to hear where the “give” is in their position. No matter what the issue is, where will they be willing to compromise? If they will not compromise, I probably will not vote for them.

Look, I’m a Republican and mostly proud of being one. But I’m more of an American and an Iowan than I am a Republican, and I know there are good Democrats who have the same priority for their loyalties.

Let’s start acting like it.


You can write the columnist at chuck@Offenburger.com.