{"id":1313963,"date":"2019-08-25T20:36:00","date_gmt":"2019-08-26T02:36:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.postindependent.com\/micek-column-can-two-ex-governors-offer-hope-for-consensus\/"},"modified":"2019-08-26T07:28:54","modified_gmt":"2019-08-26T13:28:54","slug":"micek-column-can-two-ex-governors-offer-hope-for-consensus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/local-news\/micek-column-can-two-ex-governors-offer-hope-for-consensus\/","title":{"rendered":"Micek column: Can two ex-governors offer hope for consensus?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
John Micek<\/strong>
JOE HERMITT<\/em><\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

YORK, Pa. \u2014 Politics, the Prussian statesman Otto von Bismarck famously said, \u201cis the art of the possible, the attainable \u2014 the art of the next best.\u201d<\/p>\n

Surveying our political landscape these days, it\u2019s all too easy to conclude that our elected leaders can\u2019t even get to the next, next best. Or whatever comes after that.<\/p>\n

Whether it\u2019s President Donald Trump\u2019s abrupt pivot on gun control last week, or Congress\u2019 ongoing inability to pass on-time federal budgets or reach agreements on such issues as infrastructure spending, we keep failing on areas where there appears to be broad, bipartisan consensus.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, news consumers are battered by the constant barrage of tweets, half-baked policy ideas and partisan sniping emanating from both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue.<\/p>\n

Is it any wonder that we\u2019re all cynical?<\/p>\n

But what if \u2014 just if \u2014 there was some parallel dimension where government functions according to that Platonic ideal that, well, some of us, anyway, hold in our heads?<\/p>\n

On Sept. 18, on the campus of York College in south-central Pennsylvania, two former Keystone State governors \u2014 Democrat Ed Rendell and Republican Mark S. Schweiker \u2014 will try to reach consensus on one of the most intractable public policy issues of our time: immigration reform and state government\u2019s role in it.<\/p>\n

And they\u2019re going to do it in an hour. Yes, an hour.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s the goal of the \u201cDemocracy Challenge,\u201d a new effort sponsored by the York County Economic Alliance, a regional economic development advocacy group.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere was a time in our country, where our leaders would conduct substantial debates on the issues,\u201d said Kevin Schreiber, the president and CEO of the York County Economic Alliance. \u201cThere was a time where the ability to compromise was seen as a prerequisite for service and not as a weakness.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s kind of perfect in a way that this exercise in idealism is taking place on a college campus. And there\u2019s a lovely irony that Schreiber, a former Democratic member of Pennsylvania\u2019s House of Representatives, is the guy who\u2019s overseeing it. He\u2019s been a roadside witness to plenty of legislative car crashes.<\/p>\n

\u201cPolitics has become a zero-sum game, one that now picks winners and losers,\u201d he said. \u201cCynicism in government is contagious.\u201d<\/p>\n

Indeed, public trust in government is at \u201chistoric lows,\u201d according to the Pew Research Center.<\/p>\n

In the Trump era, just 17 percent of Americans told Pew pollsters they trust government \u201calways\u201d or \u201cmost of the time.\u201d That\u2019s down from a high of 77 percent in October 1964 \u2014 after President John F. Kennedy\u2019s assassination, but before the full conflagration of the Vietnam War.<\/p>\n

Schweiker served a little less than two years, from 2001 to 2002, when Republican Gov. Tom Ridge resigned to become President George W. Bush\u2019s first homeland security czar in those dark hours after the Sept. 11 terror attacks.<\/p>\n

He said in a statement that he hopes the event \u201cwill inspire [elected] leaders \u2026 to consider that even with competing points of view that we can come together to create a solution that generates accountability.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rendell, the former Philadelphia mayor who served two terms from 2002 to 2010, said an agreement on immigration could be achievable because it \u201cisn\u2019t an issue that breaks Republican or Democrat.\u201d<\/p>\n

Clearly, that message hasn\u2019t penetrated in Washington. But no matter.<\/p>\n

Schreiber said he hopes the Sept. 18 event, which is being co-sponsored by both York College and cable titan Comcast, will become an annual occurrence, drawing in college students and others to work together to find common ground.<\/p>\n

And maybe they\u2019ll even give our battered a public dialogue a lift while they\u2019re at it.<\/p>\n

Hoping for a return to sanity in government might be a little far-fetched. Especially these days.<\/p>\n

But compared to, say, buying Greenland, it\u2019s a walk-off.<\/p>\n

Copyright 2019 John L. Micek, distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate. An award-winning political journalist, John L. Micek is Editor-in-Chief of The Pennsylvania Capital-Star in Harrisburg, Pa. Email him at jmicek@penncapital-star.com<\/a> and follow him on Twitter @ByJohnLMicek.<\/p>\n

via:: Post Independent<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

John MicekJOE HERMITT YORK, Pa. \u2014 Politics, the Prussian statesman Otto von Bismarck famously said, \u201cis the art of the possible, the attainable \u2014 the art of the next best.\u201d Surveying our political landscape these days, it\u2019s all too easy to conclude that our elected leaders can\u2019t even get to the next, next best. Or […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[160],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1313963","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-local-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-26 13:38:06","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSKE Ski Country","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1313963","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1313963"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1313963\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1313976,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1313963\/revisions\/1313976"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1313963"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1313963"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1313963"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}