Why both political parties must work together again
Although you wouldn’t know it from spending time in the Facebook comments section, Americans of all backgrounds and political affiliations form friendships like ours all the time.
One of us is a lifelong Republican. The other a lifelong Democrat. We come from different faiths, and our careers have followed different trajectories.
What sets our friendship apart, however, is that both of us have had the honor of representing the same community in Congress: Pennsylvania’s Greater Lehigh Valley region.
While our stances differ on many issues, when we look at the converging crises facing our country, we strongly agree bold action is needed now — and it will require members of both parties to step up and work together.
Consider the gravity of the moment we face today: We’ve lost over half a million fellow citizens to COVID-19, with our country suffering an unacceptably high per-capita fatality rate from the pandemic. Americans’ faith in their institutions — and even the durability of rule of law itself — has been tested in unprecedented ways. Around much of the globe, the United States’ standing is significantly diminished.
Our nation is facing its most challenging test since World War II. Defeating the global health and economic crises we face today will require a full-fledged, national mobilization on a scale unseen in nearly 80 years.
While no two moments in our history are identical, we would do well to remember some crucial lessons from the Greatest Generation’s success.
Then, most Republicans and Democrats in Congress held starkly different views on the best ways to move the country forward over the long run. Despite those ideological differences, our predecessors were willing to close ranks and marshal the nation’s resources toward the overarching goals of winning the war and, later, winning the peace.
Under Presidents Roosevelt and Truman, and General (and future President) Eisenhower — two Democrats, one Republican — the United States first led the effort of freeing the world from the barbaric, tyrannical grip of Nazism. But then our country did even more than that.
We seized the post-war period to launch a series of awe-inspiring initiatives at home and abroad — societal changes of a scope unmatched in human history. One could argue these efforts were the crowning American diplomatic achievement of the postwar era.
At home the Truman and Eisenhower Administrations, along with Congress, enacted a GI Bill that opened the doors of higher education to an entire generation of Americans and an Interstate Highway System that connected every community in every state across our nation.
Together, these achievements set the stage for the expansion of the largest middle-class any country in history had ever built. A time of shared prosperity, with workers and executives benefiting from the fruits of their labor.
None of this progress was preordained, inevitable, or politically convenient in the moment. Nor can it be attributed to the visionary leadership of this or that president alone. These enormous achievements materialized because members of Congress in both parties set aside the politics of partisan warfare in order to pursue great, national goals.
At a moment when both chambers of Congress are split almost equally, now is the time to remember these lessons. More gridlock is not an option we have the luxury of entertaining.
The national unity of purpose we are calling for isn’t a gauzy appeal for an impossible ideal of bipartisanship. We won’t pretend ideological differences don’t exist. We don’t claim that differences over public policy can, or should, somehow be erased. Indeed, lively debates on how to best move the country forward are at the very core of democracy.
But, surely, we can recognize that the historic challenges of our time will require cooperation on core issues:
Defeating the pandemic and building an economy that grows from the middle out, not from the top down.
Rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure and making investments that increase opportunity for all, such as universal, high-speed broadband.
Achieving sustainable energy independence for our country.
Combating the opioid and mental health epidemics that have left too many heartbroken families without the help they need.
We need to take these problems seriously and unite as a country to solve them. That means taking a clear, unequivocal stance against the conspiracy theory politics — from 9/11 trutherism to birtherism to QAnon — that has created dangerous divisions over the past decade.
It means resisting the lure of appealing to the echo chambers of social media and some news outlets. It means holding strong resolutely to fact-based politics and explicitly countering the spread of false information.
It means keeping America’s values of equality, individual rights, diversity and opportunity as our north star.
And it means actively fighting the magical thinking that leads millions of Americans to believe unsubstantiated claims that a free and fair presidential election was somehow stolen or that this election result can or should be overturned by members of Congress and state legislatures.
As the 117th Congress begins to confront one of the toughest times in American history, this is the time for members of both parties to rise to the occasion. Together, we can work to shape a politics capable of responding to and conquering our common challenges — a politics we can all be proud of.
Democratic Congresswoman Susan Wild represents the 7th congressional district.