{"id":3577,"date":"2011-01-17T08:16:33","date_gmt":"2011-01-17T13:16:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/?p=3577"},"modified":"2011-01-17T09:31:04","modified_gmt":"2011-01-17T14:31:04","slug":"schumer-and-coburn-make-it-a-date","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/2011\/01\/17\/schumer-and-coburn-make-it-a-date\/","title":{"rendered":"Schumer and Coburn make it a date"},"content":{"rendered":"

New York’s senior Democratic Senator, Chuck Schumer, announced over the weekend that he will sit side-by-side with conservative Republican Tom Coburn during the State of the State address.<\/p>\n

It’s a break from the image we’ve seen in recent years, with the two parties camped on opposite sides of the aisle; and it’s a huge break from the “You lie!” tone of last year’s speech.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe hope that many others will follow us,\u201d Mr. Schumer said, appearing with Mr. Coburn on \u201cMeet the Press\u201d on NBC.<\/p>\n

\u201cNow, that\u2019s symbolic, but maybe it just sets a tone and everything gets a little bit more civil.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

According to the New York Times<\/a>, Coburn echoed Schumer’s more conciliatory tone:<\/p>\n

\u201cSome of the problems in our country is we talk past each other, not to each other,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd Chuck and I have been able to work on multiple bills because we sit down, one on one, and work things out. And what we need to do is have more of that, not less of it.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

These are baby steps, to be sure, but in politics symbols and symbolic gestures matter.<\/p>\n

Lawmakers on both sides of the ideological spectrum need to not just meet regularly one-on-one; they need to do so more often in public, so that their voting blocs can see them talking, arguing and debating, not hating and dismissing.<\/p>\n

I’d love to see monthly town-hall style meetings hosted by leaders and top thinkers within both parties.\u00a0 Let’s hear not from pundits and bomb-throwers and bloviators, but from people who actually have to legislate and govern.<\/p>\n

I think we would find that in the real world — away from the liberal blogs and AM talk radio — the people wrestling with America’s real-world problems have far more in common than most voters think.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

New York’s senior Democratic Senator, Chuck Schumer, announced over the weekend that he will sit […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[20],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3577"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3577"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3577\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3578,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3577\/revisions\/3578"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3577"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3577"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3577"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}