Political dialog

Republican House members invited President Obama to a Maryland retreat last week to discuss issues and the Democratic president accepted.

The result was an exchange unique to American politics: A sitting president openingly debating the opposition party. It reminded us of the British Parliament where the debates between the parties and the sitting prime minister are vocal, enlightening, entertaining —and sometimes helpful.

Both sides scored hits. The president noted that GOP congressional leaders criticized federal stimulus spending but would then show up for media events promoting the spending in their districts.

President Obama acknowledged he hadn’t promoted better communications over health care and other issues. However, he said both sides needed to “close the gap a little bit between rhetoric and reality” in the health care debate.

The president pushed for more bipartisan cooperation and both sides seemed to agree that was desired. But just a few hours after the session the GOP issued a blistering press release denouncing the president’s opinions.

Are we ever going to get beyond the bickering and the political pettiness in this country? The house is burning and our firemen want to sit around and debate how much water, what size hose, etc. etc. to use.

President Obama went farther than any sitting president ever has to reaching out to his opposition last week.

The United States isn’t a big chess game with a player on each side making moves to crush or delay the other. We should all be working together to solve our common problems.

It requires the kind of open dialog we initially saw last week— without the sniping comments offered later by the Republicans.