Jul 6, 2010 
Joe Biden is in Iraq, the mission pivotal, crucial to forward movement in building Iraqi stability and self-reliance, a matter of high urgency. Speaking directly and candidly, as only Biden can, working to break partisan gridlock, establish political common ground, to translate collision into collaboration, embittered competition into cooperation. All that in the face of deeply rooted animosities, broad ethnic and sectarian divides, fierce Sunni/Shia antagonisms, exacerbated by varying geographically-defined tribal divisions, a legacy of many generations. A monumental diplomatic challenge even for one as wise and seasoned as Biden.
Imagine one of the Iraqi adversaries – per chance someone willing to negotiate, to transcend differences, to bridge the chasm, to aspire for common good – asking a reasonable and timely question: How do you deal with such differences in the United States? Oops!
Back home Biden presides over a similarly fractious governing body, where competition stymies cooperation, ideological divide logjams bi-partisan initiative, attempts at dialogue collapse into bitter verbal assault, and gridlock derails forward movement. With hardly a trace of “differences that divide” that abounds in Iraq. Imagine the full Senate posed for a group photograph. Thumb through biographical profiles of each senator. Racial/ethnic division? One hundred percent white. Mostly of western European lineage. Religious strife? The vast majority of Judeo-Christian heritage. Different, but not divisively so. Deep regional differences? Okay, “red” and “blue” states cluster on a national map, but nothing of deep historic divides. All well-educated, most with graduate degrees, the majority lawyers. Of upper-middle to upper class stock. Of rival parties, voting increasingly in party-loyalty lockstep, but not unlike the “choice between Pepsi and Coke” analogy so popular in Latin American perspective on Democrats and Republicans.
“Practice what you preach,” my mother told me when I was very young. “Be the change you are looking for” a more contemporary version. If we want to be a “city on a hill,” an example worthy of imitating, an inspiration to place common good against partisan agendas, let’s “practice it” before we “preach it.” Having said that . . . blessings on your effort in Iraq, Mr. Biden. A lot is riding on it.
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