the way forward in politics

My dad and I love to banter about politics.  He's a conservative, and my brother and I are liberals.  One of his biggest mysteries is as to where he went wrong when he raised us that we both turned out liberal.  We've been bantering back and forth today through email and phone conversations and I love every minute of it.  Don't get me wrong, there is no disrespect on either of our parts, just a little fun jabbing at each other.

Why don't politicians do this?  Once, I heard a freakonomics podcast that talked about how in England they have a weekly thing where members of Parliament are allowed to drill the prime minister with questions about different topics in politics.  It's all friendly banter and I wonder why we couldn't do something similar here.  The podcast went on to interview some current and retired politicians who say things have certainly changed over the course of the past couple of decades.

There was a time when members of Congress would meet for drinks after hours with members of the opposing party.  It's a lot harder to demonize your opponent when he just bought you a drink the night before.  That is no longer the case, sadly, and so we have the current political gridlock that has us moving nowhere fast.  Each side just thinks the other side is a bunch of complete morons instead of having healthy dialogue about what's best for the country.  

Obviously, no one is going to agree 100% with how to move our nation forward, but the whole idea of just getting one party into office and power is pretty useless to me.  Not to mention all the lobbying in Washington.  How is lobbying allowed in a democracy such as ours'?  When I go to the gym, I see Fox News and CNN on a couple of TV's right side by side.  I'm usually listening to my own podcasts or music, but I still read the subtitles to see what they're saying.

The single best picture I can think of in regards to trying to display the idea that each party thinks the other one is idiotic and out of touch is a book by Glenn Beck entitled Arguing with Idiots.  My friend assured me that of course he put that as the title as that's what people think about the other person they're arguing with.  I don't agree with that at all, but I'm not going to call my friend an idiot because he shares a different view.  To be fair, I haven't read the book but the title sure comes off as arrogant.

Our politics have become so polarized lately.  Very few people are on such extreme sides of the aisle though in reality.  Politicians say things in primaries to get the hardcore conservatives or liberals with the most amount of money to back them, only to go back on the things they said when it comes time for the actual election campaign.  That's when people say more middle of the ground things, to appeal to a wider array of voters.

In short, I believe the way forward in politics is simply relational.  I know that makes me sound like a hippie, but I think we'd get a lot more done if our politicians and the people supporting them would spend less time demonizing their opponents and more time listening to the other side.  As the Bible says, we should be quick to listen and slow to speak.