Share This  Poles Apart? Making Sense of Red and Blue 2012  By
Dr. Timothy Sherratt, professor of political science  I
appreciate the opportunity to explore everyone’s favorite
subject—politics. When Academic Dean Dan Russ invited me to
address this topic, he asked for a title, and for some reason I
rashly promised to “make sense” of the discord and discourtesy
in our political system. I don’t know if I can deliver in the
sense of making it all sound rational, because in politics
passions and power compete with reason. But I’ll have to let you
be the judge of that.  Sen. Mitch McConnell, Republican from
Kentucky and Minority Leader in the United States Senate,
captured the tone of American politics in our time when he
declared that “The single most important thing we want to
achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.” And
he went on to explain why Republicans had refused to provide any
votes in support of one set of the President’s proposals. “We
worked very hard to keep our fingerprints off o