The fleeting possibility of political unity on behalf of our nations kids
Friday, August 05, 2016
If there is any lesson from the past 6 months it’s that anything can happen in American politics and, as Morgan Freeman says at the end of the film Feast Of Love, “the unexpected is always upon us.” So while no one can predict what the next 12 weeks will bring, one possibility is that Donald Trump will unify the country – to support Hillary Clinton – in ways that never could have been imagined. We are already starting to see indications – in the endorsements of Secretary Clinton by a Republican Congressman, by former CIA Director Morrell, by Hewlett Packard’s Meg Whitman. More will soon follow.
The opportunity for Secretary Clinton, if she can rise to the occasion, is to put partisanship aside in the same way that some Republicans are beginning to do, and to convey a vision of how she would govern with national unity as a first priority, as opposed to the partisanship that that has all but paralyzed Washington for many years (Congress’s failure to provide Zika funding as the latest disconcerting example).
Should such a “unity Administration” come to pass, it wouldn’t last forever, that’s just not the way of the world, but there could be a window early on in which some big things could get done – especially on behalf of those who engender bipartisanship in the first place: America’s kids. Such a scenario – admittedly only one of many that could unfold between now and election day including the possibility of quite the opposite – adds urgency to our own efforts to develop, and work with others on, a bold and broad policy agenda that addresses childhood hunger and the child poverty that underlies it. Ever the optimist….
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