BIPARTSIANSHIP IS ALIVE AND WELL IN THE NH CONGRESSIONAL DELEGATION:

Most people sit in their living rooms and watch the nightly news every night and listen to partisan politics, each political party blaming each other for the lack of progress in solving the problems of our country, the problems our country is facing are very serious. A great example of bipartisanship happened during the 1990’s during the Clinton Administration, Speaker Newt Gingrich and President Bill Clinton, are on the opposite extremes of the political spectrum.  Somehow they managed to come together to get some important things done!! Working together they managed to put the country on a path towards having a budget surplus for the first time in many years.  Working together they also managed to do important welfare reforms. During the 1980’s President Ronald Reagan and Speaker Tip O’Neal managed to work together, these two men had a respect for each other, and they really liked each other. They also had the ability when the day’s work was over, to kick back and enjoy each other’s company share stories that only two Irishmen could enjoy.

So why do I cite these examples of bipartisanship? Well having just returned from the fantastic National Grange Legislative Fly-In in Washington DC, I had the opportunity to meet with all of the staff members of all of the New Hampshire Congressional Delegation.  One of the impressive things that I saw was that, we saw genuine examples of our Senators and House Members working together.  In Senator Ayotte’s office they cited how helpful Senator Shaheen’s office had been in the transition of having a new Senator.  Our Legislative Director Bob Haefner specifically asked the Ayotte staff about working together in a bi-partisan manner. They said they do on many issues, which may or may not include legislative issues that are not a major partisan caucus issue. That fits with the way we work at the state level. The group that attended felt that we had 4 very good meetings with the members of our Congressional delegation.

Right in our own State Grange, Legislative Director Bob Haefner and myself don’t agree about allot of political issues but we both respect each other’s views and positions, there are times when we agree to disagree.  When we mentioned that in one of our meetings Bob joked that yes we disagree on things we just agree that Jim is wrong. There are times when I am wrong and other times when Bob is wrong, but we still respect each other’s politics and we enjoy the thrill of the discussion.