Amidst the endless political noise of last fall's bitter election is this sad truth: We are leaving the ability to civilly and courteously exchange divergent opinions in this country.
The process of how we debate and decide upon issues is at least (and, some would argue, more) important right now than the substance of what we decide.
My first job out of college was at the World Affairs Council of Philadelphia, a non-partisan, nonprofit organization whose mission is to create global citizens. Through its venerable speakers' podium, I met global giants like Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher and Mikhail Gorbachev. Observing them, I learned that words, shaped into ideas, are how politics and policy are made real.
Eventually, I left the Council and began a two-decade career in politics, first as a candidate for Congress, next as chief of staff for Senator Arlen Specter, and finally as a lobbyist and political consultant. Along the way, I won awards, elections, and improbable legislative battles.
But while I was flexing my political muscles, the world was changing. Two forces were dramatically reshaping the way Americans received information about the world around us. The first was a complete upending of the media world. Partisan and polemical media began to displace old-fashioned, "objective" journalism.
That media reshaping was matched by a second force on the electoral front. States with closed party registration-based primaries (which tend to favor more ideologically extreme election results), along with gerrymandered House districts, effectively locked a majority of Americans into one-party rule. Add to that a need to amass 60 votes to do almost anything in the Senate, and the result is a government that is increasingly unable to meet the giant challenges or realize the great promise of our time.
We are now a nation that has segregated itself into competing choirs, preaching only to the already-converted, while drowning out each other's voices. Our views are less reasoned but more rigid. Our very democracy - born of a veritable marketplace of ideas two centuries ago - is under assault.
The result is that we talk past - not, to - one another, with no meaningful search for common ground. There is less willingness to "win some, lose some" in order to advance agendas over the longer term. And, since we seldom encounter voices and arguments that might make us change our minds, we risk becoming close-minded.
Today, restoring the means for thoughtful and respectful discourse must be a primary national goal. Neither the Left nor the Right has a monopoly on wisdom or justice. What they do have is a stronghold on their own disciples - resulting in utter gridlock in Washington.
Now, more than ever, the required mission must be to restore the value of non-partisan objectivity. That mandate is what persuaded me to rejoin the World Affairs Council as President earlier this year. It is my desire to recapture the spirit of free and open debate that helped form our country.
Later this month, the Council will launch an experiment. In the first of two "Great Debates" planned for this year, two sworn political opponents - former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton and former Congressman Barney Frank - will tee off on stage to debate the role of the American military in the world today. For global affairs junkies, this will be the political equivalent of Frazier and Ali stepping into the ring.
Though passionately opposed in ideology, Ambassador Bolton and Representative Frank are united in the belief that civil and respectful discourse is critical to our country's existence. Guests at this event can expect to be schooled in the fine, lost art of civil discourse at its best - educated, committed, but respectful.
With this inaugural debate, we hope to restore Philadelphia's heritage as the original marketplace of divergent ideas, which she surely was when our country was born. And we hope to demonstrate that Americans can reclaim the ability to deepen, sharpen, broaden and challenge our views, by exposure to the best, different thinkers.
As we like to say at the Council, "We don't care what you think. Only that you do."