By Bob Gibson
Speaker Tip O’Neill used to share a drink and political conversation with President Ronald Reagan even though they often found themselves on opposing sides of issues.
They were friends, as O’Neill put it, “after 6 p.m.“
Today, when a president and a speaker of the other party get together, even for a round of golf, people go nuts criticizing them for trying to do what leaders should do.
Leaders should talk with each other—both to find common ground and to better understand real differences.
But leaders cannot lead well in a poisoned atmosphere in which political and media cultures feast on finding and exacerbating any perceived difference, the pettier the better.
A culture that once valued and respected most of its leaders, just as it held most teachers in high esteem, now has lower expectations and finds leaders failing to measure up to even lower standards.
People who see bad government everywhere can easily tear down what is good about it.
Voters who want instant fixes when none can be available elect people who promise instant fixes.
Then they are disappointed when the candidates who promised the moon deliver cheese.
Candidates who promise what they cannot deliver tend to blame others for their own shortcomings and failures.
A blame game breeds bad politics. The blame is based on twisted, little “gotcha” shortcomings pushed by consultants trained to deliver emotional dissatisfaction.
Our somewhat depleted media covers short-term news better than it follows long-term problems that demand long-term solutions.
In the past year, new business plans and cooperative arrangements have started to rearrange ways consumers find comprehensive news about government.
We have to continue fixing our media by demanding better and balanced information if we are to have good chances of improving the nation’s politics.
We in Virginia have known and expected better.
And, every so often, when a politician is caught and convicted, investigative journalism more often than not exposes the criminality or chicanery.
Fact-based, objective journalism is still searching for new and successful business models.
Partnerships with new, non-profit journalistic endeavors, such as the barely year-old arrangement The Daily Progress enjoys to augment coverage with Charlottesville Tomorrow, offer hope that viable business models can add new life to thorough and fair coverage that bolsters democracy.
Good journalism and good politics go together and can restore faith in the ability of government to work.
Fair journalism tends to elevate discussion to consider common ground toward finding progress and solving problems.
Leaders in Virginia can still talk with each other, even if they remain friends only after 6 p.m.
Government is not for our entertainment. It is what founding fathers from Virginia helped develop—along with a free press—to make America work as a free republic.
