Guest column by Laurie Ezzell Brown of the Canadian Record
Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI) and Congressman Aaron Shock (R-IL) have had enough of trying to navigate Washington DC’s partisan ideological minefield and are building a bridge across the war zone.
Shock and Gabbard would like to get something done for a change, and on Wednesday, enveiled the bipartisan Congressional Future Caucus – their vehicle, not for repairing the partisan divide, but for bypassing it altogether.
At 32, Rep. Gabbard is the youngest woman serving in Congress. She is one of the first two female combat veterans, first Hindu and first female of Samoan ancestry to ever serve as a member of the U.S. Congress. Rep. Shock is only 31, but was elected an Illinois State Representative at the tender age of 23, making him the first member of Congress to be born in the 80s. The 1980s, to be quite clear.
Shock and Gabbard are impatient – as frustrated with the slow pace of progress on Capital Hill as they believe the public is. They plan to change all that.
How? Well, by working together. By mustering their collective youth, and that of the 40 other members of Congress who are in their 30s and 40s, and focusing on the future, instead of strategically positioning themselves for the next six months or the next year or the next election. “We really want to work together to find solutions for the next generation,” Gabbard says. “Being in a position where you are constantly reacting to situations or playing defense is not where we want to be.”
“People in their 30s and 40s look at life differently than people in their 60s or 70s,” says Shock, who may be right, but who may also be surprised to learn how many of us living outside of the political cauldron, and by now inured to the perpetual election cycle, actually care about the future – even the one we might be around to see.
The caucus is in part the brainchild of the Millennial Action Project Fellowship Program, a non-profit group dedicated to making “creative cooperation – rather than ideological conflict – the dominant mode of American political decision-making.”
Some may dismiss this as idealistic, unrealistic, impractical, undoable. A hopey, changey kind of thing. But to this pre-Millennial’s ears, it is glorious music.
Among the Fellowship’s goals: To empower elected officials, political commentators and policy thought leaders to challenge the partisan polarization that has become the political norm, to promote post-partisan policy ideas, to forge cross-partisan relationships and to engage in collaborative political leadership.
And while this might all sound like a bunch of hooey to the by-now jaded public, what it soulds like to us is a damn good idea, worth of our undivided attention and helpful support.
“We need diversity in government,” says Shock, “if you took all the members under the age of 40 and locked them in a room, they’d be able to come up with solutions to our problems in 24 hours.”
Somebody please find a key – and quickly – before Shock and Gabbard and their fellow Millennials become too entrenched in partisan warfare or too beholden to their political and financial benefactors to act with the purity of spirit and strength of conviction that will be required of them, and which have so clearly, by now, failed their elders. We will watch with interest – willing at any age to learn a few new tricks.
