Agreement, at Last

In what has to be the most toxically partisan political campaign of the last few decades, we finally found some cross-partisan agreement in the First Congressional District debate that TV6 aired earlier this week.

The unifying issue, interestingly enough, was the war in Afghanistan. Six candidates--Republican Dan Benishek, Democrat Gary McDowell, Libertarian Keith Shelton, US Taxpayers candidate Patrick Lambert, Green Party candidate Ellis Boal, and independent Glenn Wilson--all essentially said that the US should not be in Afghanistan.

To be fair, Benishek qualified his response by saying that we should not send American troops to fight in undeclared wars, and he clearly seemed to regard Afghanistan as an undeclared war.

Not only that, but all the candidates seemed to have similar doubts about the wisdom of the Iraq war.

So there we had it: a consensus from the far right to the far left that the two wars were a bad idea. It's remarkable, really, when you consider that most of us long ago signed off on to these wars to one degree or another.

And even more remarkable is that we are still actively fighting the war in Afghanistan, and we still have troops in Iraq. It makes you wonder whether the President and Congress are in touch with what people are thinking outside of Washington DC.

Clearly, on this issue at least, our political leaders are not in touch with the Upper Peninsula.

Is there anybody out there who thinks Rick Snyder won't be Michigan's next governor? Anybody?

Okay, understandably, Virg Bernero and his family are out there enthusiastically waving their hands in the air, but there's nobody else.

The latest poll on the race says it all: Snyder 53%, Bernero 29%. Snyder doesn't even need the Undecideds to win this contest.

Snyder seems to be the right man at the right time in the right place. He's running as a Republican in a state that's been run by a Democrat during miserable economic times. He's also a businessman--the anti-politician when most of us have come to distrust politicians of asll stripes. And he seems moderate at a time when some Republicans seem to be veering further and further to the right.

Of course, none of this means he'll be a good or even capable governor, but it sure looks like he'll be a successful candidate.

It would take a remarkable turnaround and a major misstep by Snyder for Bernero to even make a contest of the governor's race.

The same could be said of the race to replace First District Congressman Bart Stupak. The Republican is a political novice, Dr. Dan Benishek, while the Democrat is political veteran Gary McDowell. Voters this fall are in the mood to try something new, and that would be Benishek, a favorite of the Tea Party.

Benishek's slogan, "Enough is enough" says it all.

A Benishek victory could be the one that puts the Republicans over the top in their effort to reclaim the majority in the House of Representatives. Most polls and analysts now tell us that's a likelihood.

It's remarkable how far we've come since the early days of joy and optimism of the Obama Administration in January of 2009. What that tells us, of course, is that over the next two years, the mood could easily swing back again.

The state of the economy will probably determine that. Here's hoping that the Republicans and Democrats can cast all their partisan concerns aside, and actually do something that helps the American people rather than furthering the politicians' narrow agendas.

How about a little civility, as well? I think most of us in the hinterlands are well ahead of our leaders in that respect. Politics for most of us is not about Good versus Evil. It's about the Republicans and the Democrats, working together, searching for solutions.

That seems to be such a quaint, naive notion in this age of name-calling, demonization, and negativism. Still, is that too much to ask?