Marble Falls      Every once in a while, as I scoot between train stations in Europe or the UK, oblivious to the many of the stops, I’ll jump off the platform into some car going the wrong or opposite direction.  None of this is lifechanging.  Maybe it adds 30 or 60 minutes.  Just another part of the adventures of a foreigner in strange lands.  In a bit of whim, I had signed up for a web thing that was a forum on America at 250 sponsored by Pew Charitable Trusts.  I wasn’t really committed, but it featured a panel with three governors:  Kevin Stitt, Oklahoma, Spencer Cox, Utah, and Wes Moore Maryland.  We’re doing work in Maryland now, so initially I thought this might give me some measure of Governor Moore on the quick-and-dirty.

That was the train I thought I was catching, but then somehow Trump stirred it all up, as he is wont to do.  The purpose of this panel had been saccharine. All were part of something called Disagree Better, which Pew supported in a spirit of bipartisanship and a good ol’ college try at “can’t we all work together better.”  Pew had taken advantage of the fact that they would be in town for the National Governors Association’s annual meeting.  Stitt was the current chair, and Cox had been a previous chair, and maybe Moore was in waiting.  Trump in his usual petty and, likely, racist, way had made their annual dinner at the White House with the President into a hurt dance by trying to continue to disinvite Moore, a blue state Democrat, as well as an African-American, and the governor of another blue state, Colorado, with whom he also is feuding.  Initially, he had excluded all Democratic governors from the dinner.

This had been all over the news, if anyone was following, because Stitt, a hardcore Republican in ruby red Oklahoma, had tried to walk the tightrope, and withdrawn the sponsorship of the NGA from the dinner, unless all were invited and welcome.  The White House had gone back and forth, on and off, with the dinner, taking the position that Trump could invite whomever he pleased to the White House or not.  So, there will now be a dinner for everyone, not at the White House, where they will do governor business, and a White House dinner for all the invited governors, except for Maryland and Colorado, and any others whose mothers raised them with any kind of good manners and would whip their asses when they got home for embarrassing the family with their presence at such a slipshod affair, White House or not.

In short, a little bit of nothing, had now become something, thanks to Trump’s boorishness, and that hijacked the first quarter of the session.  All three governors were well-spoken and expressed their positions fully.  They extolled the value of state business over federal, bipartisanship, and learning from others, even when their positions were different.  They were serious and substantial people.  They were all institutionalists. They all hated the mid-cycle redistricting mess, but Utah and Maryland were still in it while they both argued that Oklahoma was only spared because what could that state do other than redistrict red to redder.  Big laughs all around at that tragedy.

By this time, what the heck, I’d stay on the train and enjoy the ride observing the scenery through these vast fields of platitudes. They were buddies. Where these guys agreed best was about service.  Moore argued that “service saves us.”  Maryland in a new program is offering to pay Maryland’s young graduates a stipend for a year where they are involved in some kind of community service and get a bonus at the end.  Utah’s Cox said they were also committed to something similar and wanted to copy Maryland.

Cox had earlier done a riff on why you should never tell young people to try to change the world, because it wasn’t possible.  He argued that where people could make a difference was in changing their neighborhood and community.  Moore and Stitt jumped on that bandwagon.  Great claims were made that this making change where you lived would lessen polarization, upend partisanship, and if done in enough places, yes, you guessed it, would change the world.

I left before the end so that I could be ready when they called, since it just seemed natural listening to all this that they would be looking for help and advice from something called the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, because we’ve always believed that making huge changes in neighborhoods, here and globally, would change the world.