Even Politicians Tell The Truth Once In A While

[jennythereader]

For some reason I have Tom Delay's retirement speech on my iPod. I think Tom downloaded it, and since we share our mp3 collections, that means I have it too.

Mostly it was a typical politician speech, but one section really caught my attention:

"For all its faults, it is partisanship - based on core principles - that clarifies our debates, that prevents one party from straying too far from the mainstream, and that constantly refreshes our politics with new ideas and new leaders.

Indeed, whatever role partisanship may have played in my own retirement today - or in the unfriendliness heaped upon other leaders in other times, Republican and Democrat, however unjust - all we can say is that partisanship is the worst means of settling fundamental political differences... except for all the others.

Now, politics demands compromise, Mr. Speaker, and even the most partisan among us have to understand that. But we must never forget that compromise and bipartisanship are means, not ends, and are properly employed only in the service of higher principles*.

It is not the principled partisan, however obnoxious he may seem to his opponents, who degrades our public debate, but the preening, self-styled statesman who elevates compromise to a first-principle. For true statesmen, Mr. Speaker, are not defined by what they compromise, but what they don't."
 

I think President Obama and the rest of the Democratic leadership in Washington need to remember this in the next two years.

* Emphasis added.