"It seems strange that we have to honor" bipartisan collaboration, noted former Republican National Committee chairman Frank Fahrenkopf Jr. Wednesday night, as he accepted his half of the Hubert Humphrey Public Leadership Dean's Award Wednesday night at the University of Minnesota.
Kirk, Fahrenkopf: U.S. partisanship has become toxic
April 22, 2010 at 2:27PM
But he and co-winner Paul Kirk Jr., former Democratic National Committee chair and, for four and a half months recently, interim U.S. senator from Massachusetts, acknowledged that partisan ill will and mistrust is higher now in Washington than at any time in their long political careers. "There's one word for the climate in Washington today: toxic," Fahrenkopf said.
The former party leaders collaborated successfully in the late 1980s to create the Commission on Presidential Debates, which they cochaired in 2008. That work, hailed as the most significant voter education forum in recent presidential elections, likely would not be possible to start from scratch today, Kirk and Fahrenkopf agreed.
"I am not opposed to partisanship," Kirk said. "It's healthy to have a civil clash of ideas... But what's going on in Washington is not healthy."
They tossed out several ideas that might tone down partisan hostility, from small steps such as encouraging more cross-party socializing among members of Congress to a major one: open, multi-party primaries for congressional seats, followed by two-way runoff elections in November. Kirk said that change would put candidates for Congress in competitions outside their own parties earlier in the election cycle. It's an intriguing idea that would address an increasingly apparent flaw in American politics: too often elected officials feel more politically beholden to their own party's insiders than to the electorate as a whole.
Other winners of the 2010 HHH Public Leadership Awards include St. Paul Police Chief John Harrington; David B. Laird Jr., recently retired president of the Minnesota Private College Council, and Dr. Barbara Sigford, recently retired as national program director for physical medicine and rehabilitation for the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. The awards program, now in its eighth year, raises scholarship funds for students at the Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs.
A cautious cheer to a noteworthy Minnesota Vikings start, which has benefits beyond pride.
