Female Supremacy Articles - Page 27

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After I left the White House, I kept a foothold in the business of American politics: as a talk-show host, analyst, commentator, speechmaker, and occasional writer. I was no longer a practitioner, but I was still a partisan, a Democrat, a blue-stater through and through. And I enjoyed the give-and-take of the political debate. But over the years, something changed, and I found myself more and more frustrated by the bitterness that now gripped the capital. Increasingly, it seemed, both sides were more interested in winning the argument than solving the problem. And the result was gridlock, polarization, and cynicism.

Surely there was another way, a better way. And I started to think about how we might move from a culture of confrontation to one of consensus, from I-win-you-lose to win-win. Was anyone in Washington practicing what I was only preaching? Were there people talking and listening to each other? Were they working together? Were they treating each other with respect and trying to see the world through each other’s eyes? And I realized that, yes, there were some. And one of the places it seemed to be happening on a regular basis was among the women in the U.S. Senate.