Carper's Corner
Return Day
November 10, 2008Wilmington – I attended my first Return Day ceremony in Georgetown, Delaware in 1974. A Vietnam veteran, I had met legendary University of Delaware professor Jim Soles earlier that year after enrolling in the MBA program there. Jim subsequently won the nomination to run for Congress in 1974 against Pete DuPont, a two-term congressman who would later become Governor of Delaware in 1977. Jim ran a spirited campaign against a very tough opponent who ultimately won with roughly 60 percent of the vote. Like a lot of other young people in Delaware that year, I volunteered to help out in the Soles campaign, and ultimately served as the campaign’s treasurer and fund raiser while in graduate school. Two days after the election that year, I joined Dr. Soles, his wife Ada Leigh – who later became a highly-regarded state legislator – their family and scores of volunteers for a trek to Georgetown, the county seat of Sussex County, in southern Delaware.
The festivities began in Georgetown with a brunch that morning at – I believe – the Sussex Central High School. Following the brunch, the winners and losers in each of the different races climbed into the same horse-drawn carriages with their families and their respective opponents for a two–hour parade through Georgetown before thousands of Delawareans who had come from all over the state to observe and participate in the spectacle. The parade ended back in the middle of Georgetown at the town’s Circle. There, a large throng of people gathered in front of the courthouse. The town crier stood on the courthouse’s balcony and announced, race by race, the votes cast by Sussex Countians for each candidate two days earlier, much as town criers had done for close to two centuries.
After the national anthem and a number of mercifully brief speeches, the county chairman of each political party joined in placing a hatchet in what looked like a small glass aquarium and proceeded to cover it with sand, literally burying the hatchet. Afterwards, people headed out around town for an oxen roast or for one of the numerous parties that local residents graciously hosted.
As I drove back to my apartment near Newark that night, I reflected on the remarkable 200-year-old tradition that I had just seen reenacted for perhaps the 100th time. My first thought in watching each winning and losing candidate having to ride off together in their respective carriage after having waged political warfare against each other for months was a form of torture, particularly for the candidates who lost.
I never imagined that day that I would come back to Georgetown for the next seventeen Return Days as state treasurer, congressman, governor and as a U.S. senator. Over those years, I realized that my very first impression of Return Day was dead wrong. From day one in a campaign in Delaware, candidates know that two days after the election they will find themselves in a carriage with their opponent on a Thursday in early November in Georgetown. Long ago, I became convinced that the campaigns that candidates wage are less harsh and vitriolic because of that realization. And having ridden in those carriages a dozen times or more, I know from personal experience that the awkward moments early in each carriage ride invariably give way to a friendlier banter as the thousands of people along the parade route cheer for both candidates, for winners and losers, lifting the spirits of each of them and their families.
Later in the day, after the burying of the hatchet, the warmth of the welcome afforded to winners and losers – and to their supporters – in any number of open houses helps to bring to an end many of the remaining feelings of enmity. And, when the sun sets that day in Sussex County, most of the combatants and their champions are ready to put the elections behind them and turn to working together on behalf of Delaware.
For years, I’ve wished we could have a Return Day, or something akin to it, for our country. Today in America, it seems that as soon as the elections are over, the next campaigns begin. The presidential campaign that just ended started almost two years ago. It has left our country badly divided and very much in need of healing and in need of leaders who are committed to promoting that healing and to uniting our country.
The speeches that both Senators John McCain and Barack Obama gave on election night struck just the right tone in calling on Americans to set aside our differences, whatever our political affiliation, and pull together again as we face the daunting challenges before us. I believe that both addresses were well crafted, well delivered and – most likely – well received.
Most Americans are not just tired of campaigns, they’re tired of politics as usual. They’re tired of name calling. They’re tired of gridlock, too. They want their elected officials at all levels, but especially in Washington, to focus on getting things done. God knows, there’s plenty to do.
We need to restore the liquidity in our banking system so that banks not only start lending to one another more freely again but to families and to businesses large and small. We need to ensure that the millions of homeowners facing possible foreclosures don’t end up walking away from their homes, dumping them back on their banks and adding to the blight of countless neighborhoods across America. We need to embrace the potential of a green energy economy, not only to create new jobs, products and technologies, but to reduce our dependence on foreign oil and on fossil fuels, while reducing the threat of globing warning and improving the quality of the air that we breathe. We need to rein in the growing cost of health care in America and come together on a series of common sense reforms that will enable us to extend health care coverage to the 47 million Americans who too often end up in our emergency rooms for care. We need to preserve both Social Security and Medicare. We need to expedite the redeployment of our troops out of Iraq to Afghanistan or to home and their families as conditions allow, and we need to begin rebuilding our relationships with many countries throughout the world. And, we need to restore fiscal sanity in this country.
That’s not all we need to do, but it’s a good start. Interestingly, many of the people here in Delaware tell me that they don’t care whether our ideas for addressing these and other challenges are liberal or conservative. They do want us to start thinking outside the box more often. Most of all, though, they really just care if our ideas work. I think they’re on to something, and I believe that the elected officials and the political parties who respond positively to those sentiments will be rewarded by voters when the next campaign season is upon us.
I don’t know that we’ll ever have anything like a Return Day for America to allow us to put the campaigns behind us and to turn to governing again. I do know, however, that there are several steps we can take in the next few months to help get us back on the track and to begin to unify our country once more. In less than two weeks, we’ll convene in D.C. for the third time a bipartisan three-day orientation for new senators and spouses that’s modeled after the National Governors’ Association’s School for New Governors and Spouses. In that “School,” “faculty” governors and spouses spend three days with the newly elected governors and their spouses, without press or staff, and basically share with the new folks many of the mistakes the veterans made, as well as the things they wish they’d known when they were just assuming the leadership of their respective states. The Senate’s orientation, like New Governor’s School, helps to reduce partisanship and gives new senators and their spouses the chance to get to know one other and a number of their more senior new colleagues. In addition, they’ll learn any number of things that will enable them to hit the ground running in January, and each new senator even receives two mentors – one from each party – to continue to counsel and advise them throughout their frenetic first year in the Senate.
While that’s going on, another opportunity to promote the healing process in America flows from the people that President-elect Obama and Vice-President Biden nominate to serve in the next cabinet and in senior positions in their administration. Their nominations can send a message – one of inclusiveness – and signal that this is not going to be business as usual again.
Yet another opportunity comes along on at high noon next January 20 on the west portico of the U.S. Capitol when a new President and Vice-President give their inaugural addresses and begin to chart a course for our country. The message that they deliver and the tone of that message – along with the State of the Union address that President Barack Obama gives a few weeks later – will speak volumes, too, and go a long way in pulling America, and Americans, closer together once more and putting us on course to becoming once again the most admired nation in the world and the mightiest force for justice on our planet.
I’ve also suggested to the new President-elect and Vice-President-elect that they and their spouses host an informal weekend retreat at Camp David without staff and press in late January and invite to it House and Senate leaders other both parties, along with their spouses. And, what the heck, why not invite Senator and Mrs. McCain to come, too. Who knows. They may find they even like each other a little bit and that, if we put our minds to it, we could start to put together a common sense, bipartisan agenda for America which most Americans would gladly welcome.