When Congress Can Help Us Help Them

The State of the Union address was once an official government proceeding in which both parties temporarily put aside their differences to hear the president offer his prognosis for the health of the nation. Last week, that solemnity and bipartisanship seemed very far away.

Instead, the address took on all the trappings of a campaign rally. Democrats repeatedly broke into chants of “four more years,” and Republicans booed, hissed, and wore campaign paraphernalia. The president taunted his detractors, they yelled back at him and the entire evening ended up feeling more like a UFC match than an age-old tradition of governance.

It’s easy to assume that American politics has always been so nasty, ugly, and brutish. While politics has always been – necessarily and definitionally – partisan, leaders from both parties have been able to set aside their differences when urgent circumstances demanded a more cooperative approach. But even those occasional instances of comity are becoming more rare, resulting in finger-pointing, name-calling and gridlock.