The Coming Debate

 

-- For four years, we have been witnessing, and some of us have been trying in our various ways to bear witness, to a sordid, incompetent, and malicious presidential administration. Now that a new administration is about to be installed, perhaps our daily experience of living in America will change, and I hope our own habits of attention will change, too. Instead of bearing witness to crime and incompetence, we will witness an emerging debate in the majority party about the extent and nature of reform. No doubt the debate in the Democratic party that is going to be newly central to our political drama will in some places be referred to as a battle, or as disunity. But the coming debate is normal, natural, and the special gift of self-government. I look forward to it, though I know that there are bound to be decisions made that seem to me insufficiently progressive, or misdirected. Even so, we're all in this together. Now, let's get on with the common deliberation.