TODAY’S BIBLE VERSE
Tennessee has a long and proud tradition of sending moderate politicians to Nashville and Washington.
Governors and senators from both parties and all three Grand Divisions who represent the sensible center of a state that was the last to secede and the first to rejoin the Union.
Statewide elected officials who reject the politics of fear and practice Tennessee values of common sense, collaboration and civility.
Fiscally responsible Democrats who have cut budgets and Republicans who have raised taxes.
Independently minded Democrats who have supported tax cuts and abortion restrictions, and Republicans who have supported immigration reform and Medicaid expansion.
Bipartisan Democrats and Republicans who have shown state and national leaders how to work respectfully and effectively with presidents and colleagues of the opposite party.
Gov. Frank Clement, a Middle Tennessee Democrat who increased funding for education and mental health and was the first Southern governor to veto a segregation bill.
Sen. Howard Baker, an East Tennessee Republican who worked with colleagues from both parties to skillfully manage the Watergate Committee through a constitutional crisis, and Congress through a contentious debate over the Panama Canal treaties.
Sen. Jim Sasser, a West Tennessee Democrat who worked with Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton and colleagues from both parties to pass fiscal reform measures that eliminated the federal deficit for the first time in a generation.
Gov. (and later Sen.) Lamar Alexander, an East Tennessee Republican, who worked with Speaker (and later Gov.) Ned McWherter, a West Tennessee Democrat, to improve the state's education and transportation systems. The list goes on and on. Democrats such as Kenneth McKellar, Cordell Hull, Estes Kefauver and Al Gore Sr.and former Sen. Al Gore Jr., who voted in favor of a moment of silence in schools and against a ban on interstate sales of guns.
Republicans such as Bill Haslam, Bob Corker, Fred Thompson and former Gov. Don Sundquist, who pushed a tax reform plan that included an income tax.
Former Gov. Phil Bredesen, this year's Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate, fits that mold of the Tennessee moderate.
Bredesen's opponent, U.S. Rep. Marsha Blackburn, the Republican nominee, clearly does not.
As governor from 2003 to 2011, Breevery desen started his tenure by cutting most state departments by 9 percent.
Then he shrunk Tennessee’s Medicaid program dramatically when its costs got out of hand, painfully dropping more than a quarter million people from TennCare.
He used some of the savings to launch Cover Tennessee to cover people with pre-existing conditions and the uninsured. He also increased education funding, raised teachers' pay above the average in the South, and expanded pre-K.
During his Senate campaign this year, Bredesen has maintained civility and run largely on his record.
Blackburn, on the other hand, has been disrespectful of her opponent and divisive in her appeals to voters.
During a debate with Bredesen, she insinuated that he was complicit in the sexual harassment of a state employee — an unfounded and ugly claim. And she seemed oddly obsessed with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, whose name she kept repeating, as if the Democrat from New York was her opponent.
She and her out-of-state supporters have inundated the state's airwaves with fearmongering attack ads filled with exaggerations and distortions about Bredesen and his record.
Ironically, the second BlackburnBredesen debate, during which Blackburn kept repeating Hillary Clinton's name, was held at the Howard Baker Center for Public Policy at UT-Knoxville.
In 1998, Baker addressed his former Senate colleagues.
"What really makes the Senate work," Baker said, "is an understanding of human nature, an appreciation of the hearts as well as the minds, the frailties as well as the strengths, of one's colleagues and one's constituents . ...
"We are doing the business of the American people. We do it every day. We have to do it with the same people day. And if we cannot be civil to one another, and if we stop dealing with those with whom we disagree, or that we don't like, we would soon stop functioning altogether."
In these increasingly and distressingly divisive times, the U.S. Senate needs more pragmatic, civil and bipartisan voices of moderation who can work together to do the business of the American people.
Tennessee voters should continue their long and proud tradition and send another Tennessee moderate, Phil Bredesen, to Washington.
Viewpoint Editor David Waters wrote this editorial on behalf of The Commercial Appeal Editorial Board, which also includes President Mike Jung, Executive Editor Mark Russell, columnists Tonyaa Weathersbee and Ted Evanoff, and Digital Strategist Dann Miller.
Better a dry crust with peace and quiet than a house full of feasting, with strife. Proverbs 17:1