#1168 – Dick Bernard: The Sunday Night Debate, two days later.

It is one month until election day. My personal position is here.
In this post I want to focus on an important, slightly noticed, aspect of Sunday nights debate.
(click to enlarge)

Sunday night I watched the entire debate from St. Louis. Yesterday, a long-time friend told of a Dad, who watched the debate with his son, whose class had been assigned to watch the debate. One can only imagine the class discussion on the day after the night before….
For me, there was one question that mattered Sunday night. It was the last question, from one of the citizens, and except for the moderators and whoever chose the questioner, it is likely that no one, including Secretary Clinton and Donald Trump, knew it was coming.
As best I recall, that last question was, basically, is there anything good you can say about your opponent?
Secretary Clinton complimented Mr. Trump on his kids. As a Dad with over 50 years experience, knowing the ups and downs of Dadsmanship, I thought that was a pretty neat compliment.
Mr. Trump complimented Secretary Clinton on her toughness (as I interpreted his response): “she doesn’t quit; she doesn’t give up…”. In his arena, power is everything, and she was ‘toe to toe’, not giving an inch. That, too, I thought was a pretty neat compliment.
So far, two days later, I have seen or heard no op eds about that final question. There have been mentions, but brief. Still, that moment on Sunday was a brave appeal for civility in the political conversation.
Politics has always been a competition of ideas. It is only in relatively recent years that it has become sanctioned brutality towards the opponent. “Character assassination” in all of its manifestations is rampant.
Back in 2004 I came across a particularly pertinent comment by then-U.S. Senator Hubert Humphrey about the nature of politics. Sen. Humphrey used a pencil as metaphor, and you can read the short description on my website here. The quotation is the first paragraph; the rest of the writing is mine. The paragraph speaks for itself.
Vigorous debate has always been a part of politics. Sanctioned brutality and polarization are much more recent, and dangerous. Abraham Lincoln famously said “a house divided against itself cannot stand“. Last I heard, success comes from being together, not in a civil war, at every level.
It happened that right before the Sunday debate I was at a meeting with my local legislative candidate, JoAnn Ward, Minnesota House District $53A.
JoAnn (she’s third from left in the above photo) is seeking her third term; the first term as part of the majority party; the second as part of the minority.
From the beginning, she was aware of how dysfunctional government had become; where helping government work through bipartisan effort had become subordinate to partisan politics, each side distrusting of the other: the objective temporary power.
Early on, she decided to become a difference-maker, becoming active in a non-partisan national group called “National Institute for Civil Discourse (NICD)“.
The picture that leads this post will be part of a major mailer to JoAnn’s constituents soon. As will the neat graphic which makes up the address side of the mailer (portion of the graphic pictured below).

Sunday night a citizen in St. Louis asked the question and became part of the solution.
Similarly, JoAnn Ward as a legislator is taking a leadership role in doing the same.
As citizens, we all have a role to play in changing the conversation.
What is yours?