It’s time to unlock the grid

By Darrell Laurant

Published: September 23, 2008

I was talking with someone the other day who reminded me of why the terms “gridlock” and “politics” have become interchangeable.

His party was always right, had never made a bad call, and was forced to constantly clean up messes left by the other party. Which, by the way, was always wrong.

No wonder nothing ever gets done in Washington. .

Imagine if they ran a business the way our government is conducted. Picture two executives competing to be president of a company, each backed by about 50 percent of the other employees. What if the group supporting the losing candidate decided to sabotage everything the winning candidate did, or attempted to do? How long before that company would grind to a halt, derailed by its own internal acrimony?

Most of the major issues of our time will only be solved by legislative compromise. Unfortunately, that’s impossible when neither major party can bring itself to admit that the other party could possibly come up with a good idea. Have we grown so accustomed to this untenable situation that we can’t imagine any other way?

I know that beneath all the smoke screens and the hot air, senators and congressmen in Washington do work across party lines. For that matter, they’ve been known to play cards and have drinks together. The thing is, it’s almost as if they’re part of a conspiracy of silence (“I’ll help you on that bill, but please don’t tell anyone”).

Here’s a daring proposal: How about if the two parties were to beat each other’s brains out during the election season, like the Yankees and the Red Sox or the Cowboys and the Redskins, then set hostilities aside in mid-January of each post-election year and begin working together—publically—to solve our problems? Until the next election year, that is.

You know what? The public would never notice. I’ll bet not 10 percent of the electorate really knows, or cares, who sponsored or worked for a certain bill.

It’s a lot like the supposed news-gathering competition between TV and newspapers, which really exists only in our own egos. I’ve yet to have anyone come up to me and say: “Boy, TV really cleaned your clock on that story today, didn’t they? How come they got it first?“

Right now, what we have in Washington is a zoo. There’s an elephant in the Capitol chambers, surrounded by jackasses.