By C. Fraser Smith
Originally published April 23, 2006
Everybody talks in politics about
cooperation across the partisan divide, of cooperating for the greater good. All
very nice - even smart - and yet almost nobody does it.
So photographs in the newspaper last week featuring
Republican Rep. Wayne T. Gilchrest and Democrat Rep. Elijah E. Cummings on a
happy-talk tour of Maryland's Eastern Shore had a certain shock value.
One of the shots caught the Republican helping the
Democrat into a pair of protective booties. They were about to start wading
through manure on a Kent County dairy farm owned by Howard McHenry. If the
Republican had been shoving the Democrat into the muck - or vice versa - there
might have been no surprise at all.
But Mr. Cummings, a champion of inner-city causes,
and Mr. Gilchrest, a Republican of determinedly independent ways, are actually
friends. Imagine that.
The congressman from Baltimore was seeing some
remarkable stuff. A pig farmer showed him a container of boar semen, not
something you run into in Baltimore or on Capitol Hill.
The material is shipped via FedEx or UPS for use in
the artificial insemination of sows. Mother Nature was getting a little boost
from modern transportation systems. Mr. Cummings had recently taken a tour of
one of the shipping operations, but who knew how vitally important it was to pig
farming?
Mr. Cummings, an African-American, said it was his
first trip to Kent County. That gap in his travel résumé might have seemed
remarkable for a Maryland politician who spent many years in the General
Assembly just across the Bay Bridge.
But until relatively recent times, the Shore has
been inhospitable to black people. Black families, if they ever ventured across
the Chesapeake
Bay, took lunch with them knowing they could not rely on finding
restaurants that weren't segregated. Many just didn't think about making that
trip.
That was then. Much has changed in the attitudes of
people and in the political leadership of men such as Wayne Gilchrest.
There was much for the Baltimore visitor to learn.
Mr. Cummings could see up close and personal the
pressure of tract housing development on land once devoted to farming. His other
host, farmer McHenry, professed a desire to keep working the land, but the
construction fever must have been palpable across a two-lane highway in
Kennedyville.
After they visited a local school, Mr. Gilchrest
took Mr. Cummings to a promontory overlooking the Sassafras River, a different
sort of hill for these men who must sometimes feel trapped in the august marbled
halls of Congress. Mr. Gilchrest called this part of the trip "political
dialysis," a somewhat obscure allusion, apparently, to the deep cleansing
properties he finds in nature's dramatic vistas.
The spot is part of the Sassafras River National
Resource Management Area. Mr. Gilchrest, whose home is nearby, says an old lodge
in the area needs an infusion of money for repairs. He told The Sun's Gywneth K.
Shaw the structure may collapse before money is found to shore it up.
The two men are to tour Mr. Cumming's precincts in
the future. There will be plenty of falling-down structures to see on that trip
- and plenty of need to find repair funds.
Surely both men will come away from these trips
with a better understanding of a colleague's district. They have their own local
issues to worry about, but they are also congressmen from Maryland who should
know every part of the state.
They might also be a little sick of the attack
ethic in politics. Two determined people can start to change the atmosphere.
Skeptics may still wonder if some other agenda is
driving these exchanges.
"Gilchrest for Senate," for example. Or
"Cummings for Senate." Or both. If either man were to run for higher
office, a little more statewide name recognition might be useful.
Men in this line of work are always aware of
opportunities, and some of them are openly ambitious. In this case, it seems
they were just trying to make themselves into better representatives of their
state.
Imagine that.
C. Fraser Smith is senior news
analyst for WYPR-FM.
His column appears Sundays. H is e-mail is fsmith@WYPR.org.