What is it, you ask? Carville, a Democratic strategist and Matalin, a Republican consultant have diametrically opposed political positions, yet still love one another enough to have been married for almost twenty years and raise a family together.
Coming off one of the most partisan elections in our nation’s history we are confronted with the belief by many historians that we are living in the most polarized period in American history. And, in a nation that operates on a bicameral legislature and split federal powers, we are facing significant concerns about the ability of our political leaders to rise above partisanship and get the people’s work done.
There are serious problems we continue to face from growing our economy to fixing our schools to shoring up infrastructure – and none of those can wait for one party to get a big enough majority to do it their way only. It seems that Congress, the White House, and even us regular folks could learn a lot from the power political couple.
And today, we have the chance to do just that, thanks to the Matalin-Carvilles’ hosting the Bipartisan Policy Center's (BPC) second annual summit in New Orleans, bringing together leading political pundits and strategists from both sides of the aisle.
The Bipartisan Policy Center is a nonprofit that was started in 2007 by former Senate Majority Leaders Baker, Daschle, Dole and Mitchell to develop and promote solutions that can attract public support and political momentum to achieve real progress. BPC’s Second Annual Political Summit, Beyond the Ballot: Making Washington Work, takes place in New Orleans today at Tulane University. It will bring together some of the nation’s most prominent Republican and Democratic political strategists to explore how the president and the new Congress can effectively work together to tackle the problems facing the nation.
As part of the day, our chairman Steve Case will join with former Cabinet Secretaries Dan Glickman and Dirk Kempthorne to announce a new BPC initiative, The Democracy Project. The Democracy Project will bring diverse voices together to support efforts to improve the ability of government to grapple with the nation’s challenges, starting with strengthening civil discourse in government and Congressional redistricting reform. This work follows the Case Foundation’s long history of supporting efforts like Make It Your Own and the Buxton Initiative that aim to build bridges, increase connections and ignite an active and engaged citizenry that works together to solve common problems.
The Summit will also feature panel discussions with leading strategists and analysts from both sides of the aisle, including folks like Dan Bartlett, Paul Begala, Ed Gillespie, Karen Hughes and Joe Lockhart. NBC’s Betsy Fischer, POLITICO’s Jonathan Martin and New York Times’ Kate Zernike will also add to the discussion. In addition to the speakers, a post-election bipartisan poll by Democracy Corp and Resurgent Republic, which will analyze the recent midterm election results and examine what those results mean for the 2012 election, will also be released at the Summit.
The panel discussions will be livestreamed (below) from New Orleans and can be accessed from the BPC’s website beginning today, Tuesday, November 9 at 10:00AM CT. The event will also be blogged live from the BPC website and can be followed on Twitter at @BPC_Bipartisan and #NOLA2010. I’ll be in New Orleans with Steve, so you can follow our Tweets as well (@stevecase and @msmithdc).
I, for one, am hopeful that efforts like these on the national and local level lead to small actions of civility in our daily lives that remind us of our common goals and help us find common solutions.
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