what can and cannot be compromised

I imagine they are waiting for a politics with the maturity to balance idealism andrealism, to distinguish between what can and cannot be compromised, to admit thepossibility that the other side might sometimes have a point. They don’t alwaysunderstand the arguments between right and left, conservative and liberal, but theyrecognize the difference between dogma and common sense, responsibility andirresponsibility, between those things that last and those that are fleeting. 　　They are out there, waiting for Republicans and Democrats to catch up with them. Chapter 2 Values THE FIRST TIME I saw the White House was in 1984. I had just graduated fromcollege and was working as a community organizer out of the Harlem campus of theCity College of New York. President Reagan was proposing a round of student aid cutsat the time, and so I worked with a group of student leaders—most of them black,Puerto Rican, or of Eastern European descent, almost all of them the first in theirfamilies to attend college—to round up petitions opposing the cuts and then deliverthem to the New York congressional delegation. 　　It was a brief trip, spent mostly navigating the endless corridors of the RayburnBuilding, getting polite but cursory audiences with Hill staffers not much older than Iwas. But at the end of the day, the students and I took the time to walk down to the Malland the Washington Monument, and then spent a few minutes gazing at the WhiteHouse. Standing on Pennsylvania Avenue, a few feet away from the Marine guardstation at the main entrance, with pedestrians weaving along the sidewalk and trafficwhizzing behind us, I marveled not at the White House’s elegant sweep, but rather atthe fact that it was so exposed to the hustle and bustle of the city; that we were allowedto stand so close to the gate, and could later circle to the other side of the building topeer at the Rose Garden and the residence beyond. The openness of the White Housesaid something about our confidence as a democracy, I thought. It embodied the notionthat our leaders were not so different from us; that they remained subject to laws andour collective consent. 　　Twenty years later, getting close to the White House wasn’t so simple. Checkpoints,armed guards, vans, mirrors, dogs, and retractable barricades now sealed off a two-block perimeter around the White House. Unauthorized cars no longer traveledPennsylvania Avenue. On a cold January afternoon, the day before my swearing in tothe Senate, Lafayette Park was mostly empty, and as my car was waved through theWhite House gates and up the driveway, I felt a glancing sadness at what had been lost.