The Washington Post's Steven Pearlstein wrote this week about U.S. Congressman Jared Golden, a former Marine, who is attempting to broker a deal about the debt ceiling. The headline is "Amid the debt ceiling madness, a lonely voice of sanity emerges." Here's an excerpt:
[I]t fell to Rep. Jared Golden, a pro-choice, pro-gun Democrat from a Trump district in the backwoods of Maine, to venture a reasonable plan to tame runaway budget deficits. Neither party would like it, but I think most Americans could accept it. In other words, an artful compromise.
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Golden is a walking refutation of such cynicism. He’s won three times in a solidly Republican district despite lackluster support from party leaders and millions of dollars in out-of-state money pouring in to defeat him. In 2020, he outperformed President Biden by 14 percentage points. And he did it not by pandering to voters or spinning them but by respecting them — and winning their respect in return.
Pearlstein quotes Golden:
I get a lot of people say things like, I don’t often agree with you — but I like that you take the time to explain your thought process.
Golden explained that in "the political and media worlds... people thrive on conflict and have a simplistic way of thinking about voters. What they overlook, he said, 'is that there are a giant number of people out there who would just like a functioning government.'"
Sadly, as of yet, no colleague has stepped forward to sign on to Golden's framework.
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