Frank Speaking

For the first time since Lowell Weicker in 1971, our Congressman comes from Greenwich. There are a lot of things you can say about Jim Himes, but you can’t fault his address.

I’ve had a few differences with Jim over the past four years, most of which overlapped his time as Chairman of the Greenwich Democratic Town Committee. Many were, in the scheme of things, insignificant. I would have rather he done one thing or another to support my campaigns in the way I liked it, for example. Or in another case, I would rather he not support certain candidates over others that I backed. From a political perspective, nothing that I disagreed with that Jim did as Chairman of the DTC probably moved the life of any Greenwich resident one iota. But for my own reasons, it mattered to me.

Other issues in which I have differences with our Congressman are far more substantial. I look at our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan from multiple, personal prisms. I look past the geopolitical to think of the effect on my two children, how the cost of two wars will harm us for decades to come. I worry about whether they will be obligated to wear the uniform of our country to fight for something I have to strain to make sensible. I have concerns that they will have to live in a world more hostile to America than I did, and I want them to be part of the world out there. On these issues, unfortunately, Rep. Himes has not satisfied my personal preferences since he took office this past January, no more than he may have had in the critical issue of ordering extra phone lines for the DTC election headquarters in 2007.

This issue of personal preference with our Congressman has popped up in a more open way lately following his “yes” vote in a non-binding resolution to defer closing of the Guantanamo prison camp. Jim Himes first found traction as a congressional candidate through the support of the left-wing “blogger” community. To say there is dismay in this group is an understatement. I have many friends that worked long and hard for a solid year to get Jim elected. When you work in the political trenches like that, you tend to get a strong ownership feel for the office-seeker, as if your issues and the candidates’ are always aligned. When those issue interests diverge, change for political calculus, or otherwise morph into something other than what you expected, grief is not an unfair word to use in describing the feelings. Politics is a very emotional activity to be involved with, because it is the intersection of feelings and logic in the pursuit of a goal, and its hard to separate or balance them when discussing ones important issues.

But this separation is something we have to do, and its the kind of thing we elect Congresspersons to do for us. In a surprising way, I find the Congressman’s vote to be strangely satisfying, even if I don’t agree with it. In one vote, he’s managed to support our President’s agenda, earn a seat at the table on the issue, represent the opinions of other (primarily Republican) residents, and perhaps even signal something extraordinarily rare in our politics – the ability to perhaps change ones mind because they were persuaded by what they saw as the facts. His action engenders one word that has up until now not been a regular one in other descriptions of Jim - respect.

America is the kind of place where well-meaning and passionate people in Fairfield County Connecticut have the clout and the drive in their collective energies into actually being part of solving the problems of the world. The course of the Iraq war started its change in the Greenwich living rooms which launched the Lamont campaign. But my solutions are not the same as many people who either agree or disagree with my general moral compass, and dogma and political rigidity needs to disappear if we are to move ahead as a society. If Jim Himes can continue to build respect as a leader, and not just as a candidate – and goodness knows he has the brains to do so –  he, and we, might do just fine.  Leading is in a large measure earning enough respect to get the benefit of the doubt. My personal preference is to have a Congressman who earns mine, and he has.