POLITICIANS PUT VETERANS AHEAD OF AGENDAS
Redandblueputpoliticsasidewhenitcomestoveterans
If Democrats, Republicans can unite on this, maybe there’s hope
People I know, respect and love were heartbroken by the results of last week’s elections. Others were heartened. How can this be? Same country. Same election. Same results. And yet some believe it’s the end of the world as we know it; others believe it’s a reboot of the world that ended two years ago.
“The more you observe politics, the more you’ve got to admit that each party is worse than the other,” Will Rogers said — 90 years ago. And so it goes. Democrats are from Mercury, Republicans are from Pluto. Or maybe it’s the other way around. I think it depends on the position of the planets on the first Tuesday in November every other year.
Our bipolarizing elections wouldn’t be so bad if they weren’t so important, and if they didn’t reflect the reality of how badly divided we are on so many matters — abortion, gay marriage, health care, education, immigration, taxes, war, cable news networks.
This land is blue land, this land is red land.
There is one issue that hasn’t been hijacked, one group that hasn’t been demonized, by partisans on either side of the continental divide.
We saw evidence of it again in a picture in Tuesday’s paper. In the photo, Congressman Steve Cohen and Tennessee Senate Majority Leader Mark Norris were sitting side by side.
What could bring together a liberal Democrat from Midtown and a conservative Republican from Collierville?
A campaign to raise funds for a proposed West Tennessee Veterans Home.
Sure. It was a photo op. But it could become just as much of a photo op for their future political opponents:
Cohen shares stage with white suburban separatist!
Norris steps one toke over the line with Obama’s pal! I’m only half-kidding. Both men threw reelection caution to the wind and sat together by the Doughboy statue in
Overton Park on behalf of a common cause.
Both have thrown their considerable weight behind a proposed 144-bed facility that would provide skilled nursing care and rehabilitation therapy for veterans in Shelby, Fayette and Tipton counties.
Cohen has pushed the feds to address treatment delays and inadequate care at the Memphis Veterans Medical Center. He’s also co-sponsored legislation to improve health care and pension benefits for military retirees.
Norris, chairman of the Senate’s veterans subcommittee, is sponsoring legislation to allow veterans organizations to use raffles and other games of chance to raise funds. He also sponsored the VETS Act, which makes college more accessible and affordable for returning veterans.
Both have supported local efforts, led by Democratic Mayor A C Wharton and Republican Mayor Mark Luttrell, to help homeless and unemployed vets.
Is their support for veterans politically motivated? Of course it is. But that doesn’t mean it’s not also genuine and genuinely important.
Regardless of how you feel about Bush’s wars or Obama’s wars, we all agree that we have an obligation to support the men and women we sent to fight them — during their deployments and long after.
Young men like Adam Martin of Bartlett, who spent four years in the Navy deployed to Iraq, Afghanistan and posttsunami Japan.
Martin, 25, enrolled at the University of Memphis last spring, with the aid of the bipartisan-supported post-9/11 G.I. Bill and the U of M’s Veterans Resource Center.
“It’s a culture shock,” said Martin, majoring in business finance. “There’s no chain of command, no (commanding officers) telling me to get up, go to class, study. But I think I’m more mission-focused than a lot of undergraduate students.”
That’s what we need here in red-or-blue America. A more mission-focused approach to politics.
“When all of our talk about politics is either technical or strategic, to say nothing of partisan and polarizing, we loosen or sever the human connections on which empathy, accountability and democracy itself depend,” author and educator Parker J. Palmer wrote in his book, “Healing the Heart of Democracy.”
“Within us is a yearning for something better than divisiveness, toxicity, passivity, powerlessness and selling our democratic inheritance to the highest bidder.”
A yearning for a common mission — one that can lead to another, and another.
“Rightly understood, politics is no game at all,” Palmer wrote. “It is the ancient and honorable human endeavor of creating a community in which the weak as well as the strong can flourish, love and power can collaborate, and justice and mercy can have their day.”
And Steve Cohen and Mark Norris can sit side by side and work together.