Sworn Friends?

How, in short, do the ideologues of the Left and of the Right react to civility, even friendliness, among rival politicians?

When I read the blogs or listen to the comments of today’s fierce ideologues, I think that they look askance at any camaraderie or compromise in politics. They’d rather win an argument, at least in their own eyes, than advance the interests of the country at large. (Or even their own causes, if incrementally and incompletely.) And they have no patience for the simple practical fact that politics, like much of life, is about people working together with people, sometimes people who have deep disagreements....

Members of Congress and other public officials are sworn to do what’s best for the country. It’s disappointing how infrequently they do that, to be sure.

But surely the solution to that problem isn’t for members of competing political parties to wall themselves off from one another, sworn enemies. According to most people who’ve spent decades in Washington, there’s been too much of that partisan walling-off in recent years anyway.

[via RedBlueChristian]