Born to Politics: Our American Road Trip to Tomorrow

All politics is personal.

There is no magic line between "us" and some "them." We're all in this together and politics is how we get things done.

Ever since the Greeks invented the concept of politics as what occurs in our public space, ambitious leaders have claimed that their opponents were "playing politics" and for that reason, we should ... you got it: "Trust me."

Right.

If someone tells you that politics is the problem and they are a some magic "non-political" solution, hold onto your wallet, hold onto your vote, hold onto your children.

I'll leave it to academics to argue over when politics swallowed privacy. Maybe that happened when we left footprints in the last frontier, or when the last "UNKNOWN" smear on our global map got filled in, or when radio and TV and now the Internet could bring any reality anywhere so we all became witnesses to and thus involved with our whole world. Maybe privacy ended when the mushroom cloud vaporized Hiroshima and some stranger could push the nuclear Armageddon button to destroy all of us with a thousand globe-splitting bangs, or when the toxic exhaust from our marvelous machines drifted like a shroud over our whole blue third planet from the sun.

I don't know when everything became political. I don't care. It's the reality we're in now, the truth we're passing on to our children and grandchildren, the way things are.

We all want something. We all have needs. We all have hopes and dreams. Politics is how we make things happen. If we don't admit that – worse, if we lie to ourselves and to others about how things work....well, then what we work out will be a lie and lies seldom work out well, even for the liars.

We can and should quarrel over how to get things done. What a relief to be able to do that! Unless we're crazy, all of us know we don't know everything and aren't always right. So to be able to whittle our smarts with someone else's sharp idea means we'll all be better off. That fundamental principle of politics, that right to disagree and to seek compromise, is part of America's gift to the world. We call it democracy, and it means not only do we have the right to have a say in our fate, we have a responsibility to speak up – plus a responsibility to respect everyone else's right to do the same.

That spirit of democracy, that element of politics America invented with blood and guts and no perfect vision of how we were going to make it to tomorrow is what's powered us here at Politics Daily for the last two years. We've tried to foster a civilogue, present news and viewpoints to you our readers without SHOUTING or shooting slogans at you like bullets designed to drive your hearts & minds one direction or another. If we can't be civil to each other, our politics will give us an ugly civilization.

We appreciate you being here. We're a ragtag bunch of journalists, prose-slingers, editors and techs working a 24-7 job. We try our best to bring you glimpses of what we think happened in our world even if – let's face it – on a good day, we've glimpsed as much shadow as substance.

And what politics we've seen. People fill the streets from Wisconsin to Cairo, from the shores of Tripoli to mountains of Tennessee, from tragedies in Japan to travesties on our own shores, from scandals to statistics written in our brave men and women in uniforms blood.

We're all riding through this political world in a car we call America. Where we're going, nobody really knows. We all hope it's to a better tomorrow.

Thanks for letting us try to wash the windshield.