Cowboys & Immigrants

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/people-places/Presence-of-Mind-Cowboys-and-Immigrants.html

"The Frontier and Ellis Island analyze problems in different ways and arrive at different decisions. The Frontier assumes the drunken soldier is a rapist or murderer and shoots him between the eyes. Ellis Island may see him as a confused fool and hope to talk him into a cup of coffee and a 12-step program. Roughly the same choices present themselves to a president: the planet is the Frontier; the planet is Ellis Island. Genius is the ability to hold two contradictory truths in the mind at the same time without going crazy."

While genius might be asking too much from our current politicians, it is not to much to ask that that they be able to hold opposing views in mind, put extreme partisanship aside and make rational decisions and the occasional compromise to reconcile these competing but not mutually exclusive demands of a free people. Obama has striven for reconciliation on many levels, but the other party has to come to the dance.