I had lunch with a Republican friend of mine today. It was great to see him again. We talked some about politics, but mostly we reminisced about old times. We caught up. We shared aches and pains and family stories and laughs about friends, some who have taken the high road and others who haven’t. We have been pounding each other for the better part of a week with pretty snarky e-mails about the election and our divergent points of view regarding same, but somehow, surprisingly, we had very little animosity once we shook hands and broke bread together. It’s amazing how quickly you can find some common ground with someone you have known for a very long time, even if you have not seen them for many years. But I made up my mind I am going to have a civil discussion with my friend about what's going on in America, even if it's painful.
We decided we would take up one political issue at a time and meet once a week to discuss it after we’ve had time to research it. The topic for the coming week is the cause of the current financial mess. He contends that the whole bloody mess can be traced back to the "Carter Administration and other liberal Democrat programs" that made banks make bad loans to "colored people and others who had no business getting their own houses and then when they couldn’t pay, the whole mortgage business went south and all these loans were guaranteed by Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae and when the Feds had to take them over it swamped the credit markets and caused the whole calamity." Further, he claims that John McCain warned the Congress about this in 2005, but Barney Frank was shacking up with somebody (wink, wink) who was in charge of Fannie Mae (or maybe Freddie Mac- he’s not sure on that point) and because of this, or maybe in spite of this, the Democrats blocked the Republican efforts to "do something about it."
He is also of the opinion that George W. Bush was running the economy just fine for six years until those "Damn Democrats got in charge of Congress for the last two years and screwed everything up." Well, you can see I have a hard wingnut to crack here. But I will show up next week with my facts and figures in hand and we’ll see what happens. I have told him already to be prepared to back up any of his harebrained claims so he's got a lot to live up to next week. I'll report back to you guys next week on what he shows up with. This is not just gamesmanship for me. I really think this is a legitimate way to talk some sense into this guy. If I'm wrong, at least I will have tried. It's better than having an e-mail flame war that costs you a 50 year friendship.