Citizens Rather Than Partisans!

This column is a departure from technology and consulting and a brief comment on some ideas for moving our country forward.

September 30, 2008

Recently I had the opportunity to attend the Democratic Convention in Denver. I discovered that some of my associates from the X Prize Foundation had solid access to daily passes and so we headed down not knowing what to expect from this event.

Naturally, we expected the place to be filled with Democrats and we were not wrong. The city was awash with blue signs, pins, poster, banners and even blue people. The trappings of partisanship were everywhere. We attended as many events as possible to get the complete picture. With our passes we were able to roam around the entire venue and onto the floor of the convention. It was an exciting event that was obviously thoroughly planned with a variety of rituals that we have all come to expect.

Flag 20080922While much of the convention was partisan, many of the speeches and sentiments were clearly focused on a vision for our country that showed steady improvement and that called for putting in place the programs to achieve some lofty goals.

The next week, since tickets were not obtainable, I watched every minute of the Republican convention on television. This was really the first time that I have ever watched both completely.

Stripping away the colors and the partisan speeches I was struck by the similarity of some of the core messages being delivered.

It was apparent that many of these ideas transcend both parties. Once again it made me wonder why there is so much division in our culture, why we cannot work better together and how in the world do some people adopt various beliefs? This is a topic that I regularly think about. One interesting recent article in the Wall Street Journal discusses a potential genetic component to ideology: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122047003725696177.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

But the underlying foundation of our country was built by all of its citizens…no one party can lay claim to our success.

I don’t want to be known as living in a Red state or a Blue state but rather in the United States.