What we need is compromise, not posturing

5:40 PM Saturday, February 6, 2010

America, all the polls say, is tired of rabid partisanship.

Tough.

In Ohio, moderates of either party — the people who might reach out to the opposite party and find a middle course — are at a disadvantage.

To be elected they have to first pass muster with their own party. Increasingly, that means toeing the line of the party’s most extreme members.

The parties’ bases are often more interested in maintaining purity than actually governing.

Witness the gridlock in Washington. The country won’t be moving until someone comes up with a way to mix the political equivalent of oil and water.

On this website, Ross McGregor, who represents Springfield and part of Clark County in the Ohio House, explains some of what he’s been doing in Columbus since he took office in 2005.

McGregor is not an ideologue and his ideas straddle different worlds. He backs both protecting the rights of gays and streamlining government.

His moderation has probably put him into a primary race against Ethan Reynolds, a conservative high school senior who believes McGregor is too liberal.

McGregor represents a district where Republicans and Democrats are about equal in numbers, most voters are independents and the balance of power is paper thin.

To accurately represent this or most districts in America, a politician would be more pragmatic in solving problems than ideological.

But Ohio’s gerrymandering put the power to field candidates with the most extreme wings of the political spectrum in many races.

Term limits have also hurt the ability of state politicians to work together. Office holder know they have only a short time in office and working with the other party over a long career is no longer a consideration.

Gerrymandering especially has been bad for good governance.

Ohio’s current districts are designed to create safe districts for both parties.

If you look at a map of Ohio’s Congressional districts, for example, there is no other explanation for their meandering shapes than to create districts that would return to power the politicians who drew the lines.

The result is that many of the people we send to Columbus or Washington don’t really represent the opinions of the majority. In a representative democracy, that’s a problem.

Most Americans simply don’t understand why it is so hard to put aside party posturing and simply move ahead with a practical approach to solving the many problems that face us at every level of government.

A start might be for moderates to re-enter the political fray and stop allowing the two major parties to be controlled by people more likely to fight than compromise.

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