My Republican friends...

Taking the time to build friendships with people we disagree is the only way we can ever make progress.

Earlier this week, my friend David Litt invited me to join him on a Substack Live. David is a smart dude, and we had a good time nerding out like only a couple of hacks can do. You can listen to the entire conversation here.

Last night, driving home from an out of town dinner, I kept going back to a little segment where I talked about how during the debate over the legislation we passed here in Florida after the Parkland tragedy, a good Republican friend of mine offered some wise counsel on how to talk about gun issues in a way that made it clear the you can support common sense reforms in a way that also stresses that you respect and trust law-abiding and trustworthy gun owners. It was a conversation I’ve thought about often when talking about difficult issues.

In his response, to paraphrase David - who has written a book about learning to find common ground through learning to surf with his brother-in-law, commented about me using the phrase “Republican friend” to lean into a point about how few of us in the business have genuine friends across the aisle.

And it is sadly very true.

I saw a troubling clip this week from a poll done by Pew Research. The slide, from their global attitude survey work, asked citizens of a number of countries whether they viewed their fellow citizens as morally good.

Of the 25 countries polled, nearly all developed nations, the mean score was in the low 70s - meaning roughly 70% of people said their fellow countrymen were moral people. Places like Canada, Australia, Japan and Indonesia saw that number rise to the high 80s to the low 90s.

The US? Only 47% of Americans saw their fellow Americans as morally good. That ranked last.

That should rattle us all.

America is unique among all of the nations because our sense of place is rooted, not in geography or ethnic lineage, but instead, rooted in an idea — a covenant that to be American is to be born free, with rights enshrined from our founding, and a shared responsibility to protect those rights. We are a nation of laws, not men. And through those shared values, there is no country on Earth where people can change their station in life as rapidly as in America.

But when we have coarsened ourselves to the point that more than half of Americans believe their fellow countrymen are not morally good, we are truly edge of putting the entire enterprise at risk.

When I started in politics, I worked for a Democratic member of the Florida House who represented the most GOP district in Florida held by a Democrat. Working together for us wasn’t an option — it was required for basic political survival. And we did big things, at a time when big things done collectively were still possible.

When was the last major problem in this country that we solved in a collective way? I am not even sure we can solve small problems collectively anymore.

Which goes back to the conversation I had with David — a conversation I wish we had lingered on longer.

About 15 years ago, I came back from visiting the beaches of Normandy wondering (and likely know the answer) if the guys who died on that beach would be proud of the way all of us in politics handle ourselves.

So, I made an effort to make friends across the aisle - for three reasons. One, it just seemed like the right thing to do. But secondly, on a higher level, I thought it would help me be a better strategist if I more regularly tested my own priors by talking to people who disagreed with me. There was an intellectual challenge to learning how to listen more, how to have holes poked in my own beliefs, and to better understand how others thought. Plus it was fun to spar about basic political hackery and strategy.

Finally, on a more practical level, I got into politics to do things, and in my home state of Florida, doing things as a Democrat requires persuading a GOP legislature, and that means finding people who are willing to carry the mantle of change with you.

To this day, I believe if I sit down with any Republican, we can find something to agree on. It might only one thing out of a hundred — but it will be one thing — and if we commit to working on it, we can make change on that one thing.

And here’s the thing, when you do things together, not only do you learn about each other, you get to celebrate the joy that uniquely comes from success that was driven by teamwork.

One of my favorite people who serves in the legislature is also the most unlikely of friends, Ileana Garcia. I worked for Obama and Biden. She chaired Latinas for Trump, and worked in the first Trump administration. I am a white dude from North Florida. She is a Cuban woman from Miami. There are any number of things where I am confident we think the other is crazy. But a few years ago, we learned we had suffered with a similar form of childhood epilepsy, and over five years of working together, we’ve passed two laws together, and increased funding for epilepsy services by more than 5 million dollars.

And a long the way, we found out we genuinely like each other, and we’ve since then, we have found other things to work on together. Today, Ileana is my friend in every sense of that word.

Perspective is important. My buddy, Chip LaMarca, a state legislator buddy from Fort Lauderdale who was also Chair of his county GOP party, once said to me (paraphrasing) “I am a Republican in Florida’s bluest county, and you are a Democrat working in a Republican state. We kind of have to do the same thing.” And as Chip has become a truly genuine friend, I also now better understand why that perspective is important in governing. Decisions are easy when everyone around you agrees with you - but real leadership comes from finding a path forward when that path forward requires persuasion.

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I mentor a young man in the Philippines, Lord Arnel Ruanto, known locally as “LA.” LA inspires me. He grew up in a working class family with a mother who taught school in Dubai to pay for her kids to go to school. LA was a young activist who fought the political establishment in his town to get elected to the town council, and even when threatened by the nation’s former President, LA kept grinding, building an organization that recruits and trains young people to run for office, and last year, toppling a 33-year family dynasty to become Mayor of his hometown.

When I visit him, we will travel the country together and talk to young people about getting involved in politics, which inevitably leads to 20 questions about America — questions about sports, politics, life — everything you can imagine. I love doing this more than almost anything I do in my life because it serves to offer perspective. See, when you talk about America in this way from outside of the borders of America, you realize we agree on way more than we don’t.

Things like freedom of speech, freedom of press, due process in law, the rights of girls to go to school and thrive, and the opportunity to change your own station in life — they aren’t a given in most developing world countries. They other thing you see is how people view our nation — not necessarily our politics — but America as the idea. I often come home as revitalized by my own pride in this country as I am rejuvenated by being around LA and his infectious spirit. I wish more Americans could experience this.

I am an optimist and an idealist at heart. I believe as fully today as I did when I was protesting apartheid in South African as a teenager that I can help change the world. But that world view doesn’t shroud the fact that nation isn’t in a great place. And here’s the thing — we are all the only ones that can change that, and treating every interaction with the other political party like it is a death match for the soul of the nation isn’t the way out.

I believe most Americans want the same thing, even if the road to get there is different, and I believe even on the most intractable of issues, if the political will exists, common ground of some kind can be found. Take abortion — surely in the midst of this debate, most Americans on both sides of this issue agree that it should be easier, cheaper, and quicker to adopt children. I am not saying the core argument isn’t important — it absolutely is — but so would be making it easier for children without a home to be adopted into one.

But to do this takes initiative. Progress is harder than bitching about the lack of progress. It is far easier to blame the other than to figure out how to work with the other to solve a problem. It takes a lot longer to learn the art of persuasion than it does to craft a clever tweet.

In the end, we are all only responsible for ourselves - yet collectively, we are all responsible for the larger endeavor. Building genuine friendships and finding ways to make this country a better place, even in the smallest of ways, is vital if we are going to start rebuilding the trust in each other to get this train back on track.

Not sure how to start? I wasn’t either 15 years ago.

So, I sent a DM on twitter to a guy named Kirk Pepper, a Republican operative in Florida who is from rural Mississippi. We met a few days later for lunch, and again a few days later over bourbon. On paper, we were about as different as two humans in politics could be.

Today, he’s one of my best friends on the planet.