Steve Harvey

To those who oppose compromising with your ideological opposites, please recognize that this is a diverse nation, with diverse views. Deep convictions may be noble, but inflexible insistence on their exclusive inclusion in public policy is not. We can and should strive mightily to advance the ideas that we believe best serve the public interest, the policies that we believe are most fair and reasonable, but we should not seek the satisfaction of dying in agony on crosses lining the Appian Way, wondering if the moral victory of having shouted "I am Spartacus!" was really the best of all deals to cut. Rather, we should get on with the business of enjoying lives made slightly better by our best efforts, while we continue in good humor and good faith to endeavor to improve them yet more.

Compromise doesn't just allow us to coexist without being polarized into a perpetual, alternating condition of those in power and those out. It also allows us to move past the ideological disputes and into the detail-laden practical business of solving problems. Ideological purists at both ends of the political spectrum reduce a truly complex world to a handful of platitudes, from which they derive their respective prefered policy sledge-hammers. But, in reality, the challenges we face require a more diverse set of more precise tools.

We need to be a nation more like the NASA engineers and scientists depicted in the movie "Apollo 13," pouring everything onto the table to figure out how to solve the critically important puzzles posed by modern life. How do we continue to fuel our energy-hungry society, in ways that are sustainable, preserve our energy independence, and prevent the by-products of combustion from dangerously contaminating our environment and altering our climate? How do we fund and staff and manage excellent schools that deliver on the promise of providing equality of opportunity to all Americans willing to work hard and be responsible citizens? In general, how do we maintain and improve our social and material infrastructure, so that we can pursue our lives, our liberty, and our happiness secure in the belief that we are doing so on firm foundations?

Governing ourselves isn't fundamentally an ideological challenge. It's a practical one. Sure, there are genuine ideological differences that can't just be wished away. And we can and must continue to work together to find common ground on those issues, to agree to disagree and then find a way to reach a middle ground whenever possible. But that middle ground should define the beginning, not the end, of our political efforts, for it is within the context of that common ground that we can roll up our sleeves, pour everything onto the table, and tackle the problems and challenges that confront us.