Modern Media Doesn't Replace Political Discussion

Thomas Friedman writes today about the disappointment of Egyptian activists in their choice to vote for their next leader:  Either the Brotherhood or a Mubarek official.  They are disappointed that Facebook and Twitter did not allow them to find someone who is in the middle.

Well, you cannot replace organization and face-to-face meetings with a mechanism that "readers" are free to ignore.  While I try to convince readers of this blog, I have no way of knowing what explicit success I have as I have no way of knowing how open minded my readers are.  You can only get that feedback from a face-to-face meeting.

There are two take-aways from this for the U.S. campaign.  The first is the campaign must focus on meeting people, social media is only good for communicating with supporters and raising money from them.  The second is that once you are in the government, if the other side has a blocking minority and you want to accomplish something, you have meet with them and find a compromise in the middle.

The Tea Party does not view compromise as acceptable but Simpson-Bowles is the path forward and President Obama should start supporting it with all his efforts to force such discussion.

But I digress from the main point of the value of face-to-face discussion.  Anyone who reads my blog and RedStateVT's blog know that in the current environment we are like oil and water politically.  But when we are socializing we enjoy each other's company and have a good time.  What are the commonalities that allow that.  Well, certainly sense of humor plays an important role in that but so does a common sense of values centered on the need for individuals to be responsible for their own lot in life and to make the best of it living within their means.  It is probably at that point we diverge because where do you draw the line on what the government should do for the individual and reasonable people can differ on that.  But only if you are having a discussion with someone who opposes that point of view can you have a debate about the specifics of where you end up drawing the line.

RedStateVT does not want people dying in the streets uncared for but he does not want the government  socializing medical care.  Well we have what we have today and we know we need to get somewhere else and how do we get there?  Only by discussing that face-to-face can you find a middle ground and get something done.  Thus, the name of this blog.

And maybe the next time RedStateVT and I are on the golf course we can have this discussion but not when he is trying to make a 10' putt for a par.