Last night, I was belatedly listening to Tom Keene’s podcast (link, subscribe) interview from March 12th with former Oklahoma Governor and Senator David Boren, now President of the University of Oklahoma. Boren, a conservative Democrat, was Governor from 1975 to 1979 and represented his state as Senator from 1979 to 1994. He was on Keene’s show to talk about ideas in his recently published book “A Letter to America.”
My major takeaway from the interview was that Boren reminds us how much more Bipartisan congress was as few as 20-25 years ago. We need the right kind of leadership to move forward successfully because I feel we are at a pretty important point in history where America’s destiny will be decided. Our leaders in Congress and the Oval Office will need to reach across party lines to forge much needed reform to our economy, our political process, and our foreign policy if we are to navigate the period ahead.
Yet, a lot of people have been saying, since the Republicans took over Congress in 1994, that the Political Gridlock and divisiveness we have had ever since serves America well. I disagree 100%. Gridlock means that the things we need to get done don’t get done. Remember the Federal Government Shutdown in 1995? We are in dire straits in this country because we have no leadership. We have congressional parties and a President beholden to their own partisan agendas, unwilling to work across the aisle for true, meaningful change.
Boren was one of a number of politicians who had been urging Mayor Michael Bloomberg of New York to enter the Presidential race in order to get the centrist Bipartisan candidate we desperately need.
Boren hailed the days when the Senate was led on the Republican side by Everett Dirksen and on the Democratic side by Lyndon Johnson.
Amazon describes Boren’s book like this:
A Letter to America boldly faces the question of how long the United States, with only six percent of the world’s population, can remain a global superpower. University of Oklahoma president David Boren explains with unsparing clarity why the country is at a crossroads and why decisive action is urgently needed. He draws on his experiences as the longest-serving chair of the U.S. Senate’s Select Committee on Intelligence and as a state governor and leader of a major public university.
Boren asserts major reforms to restore the ability of our political system to act responsibly. We have shared values, and we should use them to replace cynicism with hope and the determination to build a better future. Bipartisan cooperation on behalf of national interests needs to replace destructive partisanship, and we should not rule out electing a president independent of both existing parties. We must fashion a post-Cold War foreign policy that fits twenty-first-century realities–including several contending superpowers. We must adopt campaign finance reform that restores political power to the voters, rather than special interests. Universal health care coverage, budget deficit reduction, affordable higher education, and a more progressive tax structure will strengthen the middle class. Boren also describes how we can renew our emphasis on quality primary and secondary education, revitalize our spirit of community, and promote volunteerism. He urges the teaching of more American history and government, for without educated citizens our system cannot function and our rights will not be preserved. Unless we understand how we became great, we will not remain great.
The plan Boren puts forward is ambitious and hopeful. It challenges Americans to look into the future, decide what we want to be and where we want to go, and then implement the policies and actions we need to take us there.
About the Author
A Rhodes Scholar, David Boren is President of the University of Oklahoma. A former governor of Oklahoma, he served as U.S. Senator from Oklahoma from 1979 to 1994 and chaired the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence from 1987 to 1993.
There is a lot of truth in what Boren says. Many former Congressmen and Senators have expressed similar concerns. John Danforth, the former moderate Republican Senator from Missouri and Ambassador to the UN, published a book entitled “Faith and Politics” that had largely the same bipartisan thesis.
From where I sit, David Boren and John Danforth are right on target. Keep that in mind when it comes time to vote.
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