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Rep. Artur Davis

Rep. Artur Davis started off Policy Day talking about the importance of bipartisanship in politics, especially given the gravity of the problems facing our nation.  These problems have presented a massive challenge to President Obama, but Rep. Davis went through the myriad challenges Obama faced during his presidential campaign, from fundraising to name recognition to organizing, and expressed confidence that Obama would succeed in taking on these current difficulties in the economy, national security and other issues.  He feels that Obama, like all great presidents, will be able to change the debate occurring in the country, and to bring people together.

He also talked about the need for mutual goodwill in politics, and for an end to seeing politics as a zero-sum game.  This is not the same thing as ending disagreements; just putting an end to the vitriol that sometimes makes having honest policy debates difficult. Good ideas do exist on both sides of the aisle, he said, but that the tone that sometimes overtakes discussions makes it very hard to come up with a workable framework for policy.

Davis noted that politics works best when each sides is willing to listen to the other side’s best ideas, especially for an issue as massive as health care. On that topic, Davis said that the true difficulty is not so much figuring out what types of regulations are needed, but how to reduce the occurrence of disease in the first place. He listed entitlement reform and education as the next most difficult issues to solve, but again, emphasized the necessity that all good opinions be heard, regardless of party affiliation.