Consideration

I’d like my elected representatives to be the people who would let you go ahead of them at the grocery checkout if they had two baskets full of groceries and you had a gallon of milk. It would be excellent if my next Congressman was the kind of guy who took turns with other drivers when two lanes merged into one on the highway. I’d like my mayor to be the kind of woman who wouldn’t wait until I turned around to check on my daughter to jump in front of me at the local library sale so she could get to the box of second hand books I had been looking at before I had a chance to take all of the choicest book. I’d like my State Senator to be the kind of woman who wouldn’t, while leading a program for toddlers where one toddler and his dad were sitting right in front of her, refer to all of the parents as “mothers.” In everyday life these kinds of encounters are annoying, and annoying I can handle … if I dig deep enough. The lack of civility in the politic al realm is annoying and a bit more besides. When a leading candidate for President refuses to acknowledge that the sitting president was born in the country it sets a poor example for the rest of us. It also contributes to an atmosphere that is not conducive to cooperation and compromise, absolute necessities when it comes to solving the problems facing our country. It certainly isn’t enough for elected representatives to be polite and considerate, but it can’t good enough anymore for them not to be.