The news this week has been a bit more optimistic concerning bipartisan cooperation between the White House and the republicans in congress. Apparently the president bypassed the partisan leaders and invited a varied group of legislators to dinner to discuss ways forward. Obama’s strategic thinking seems to be to go around the dysfunctional, polarized leaders to find some common ground. We’ll soon see how well it works.
All this got me to thinking about how dependent we are on each other in general to simply work things out. When collaboration occurs in good spirit, we move ahead. When debaters lock in to a “my way or no way” attitude, their mean-spirited attacks destroy everything. This seems to be a consistent lesson of history, and a Wall street vs. Main street lesson as well.
As I have argued in previous posts, when profit success grows into personal greed, the people in the middle who enabled the success to begin with become diminished. And when this otherwise comfortable middle class sinks into financial struggle, serious division begins. In short, past cooperation degenerates to hostility and eventually the entire system crashes.
Is it possible that today once again the simple answer is to just go around gridlocked leaders to form good faith groups that are willing to work things out? This could be really big news, and the resulting visibility just might begin our desperately needed turnaround.
Larry D. Lauer 
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