Another Opening Day (From the Cheap Seats)

There is something about fall that feels like another opening day.

College football is underway. The NFL is back. Stadiums are filling again. Fans are wearing their colors, climbing the steps and finding their seats. A new season has begun.

Politics is in the air too.

Another election season is moving toward November. Candidates are making their cases. Voters are listening—or perhaps trying to listen through all the noise. Predictions are being made and arguments are getting louder.

And this fall, I have an opening day of my own.

On October 13, Politics from the Cheap Seats: Rebuilding the Middle Ground of American Democracy will officially be published.

Football. Politics. A book.

What could they possibly have in common?

Maybe more than we think.

They all involve a journey. They all have beginnings and endings. They all have people cheering from different sections of the stadium. And none of us knows exactly how the season will turn out when it begins.

For me, this particular journey began long before I ever thought about writing a book.

It began in a small Pennsylvania town.

It began watching my father serve as a township supervisor. It continued through college, local government in Maryland, law school, business, family, successes, mistakes and all the ordinary experiences that accumulate over a lifetime.

Seventy-five years went by faster than I might have expected.

Somewhere along the way, I realized I had spent much of that time watching American politics from a pretty good vantage point.

Not from the floor of Congress.

Not from a television studio.

From the cheap seats.

Over the past several months, I've tried to share some of that journey here.

I started by explaining why I wrote the book.

I shared some of the lessons that have followed me through life:

If everything is important, nothing is.

Nothing changes until something changes.

Where there's a will, there's a way.

They aren't political theories. They're lessons from life. But somewhere along the way, I began to realize they had something to say about politics too.

We traveled to Philadelphia, where nearly 250 years ago ordinary people wrestled with extraordinary questions about government, freedom and what this new country might become.

And through all of it, we kept coming back to something pretty simple.

Democracy isn't something that happens only in Washington.

It happens where we live.

It happens in our communities, around our kitchen tables, in conversations with neighbors and friends, and every time we decide whether we're going to listen to someone who sees the world differently than we do.

That is really where the Cheap Seats came from.

This book isn't an attempt to tell anyone what to think.

It is one citizen looking back over seventy-five years and asking what we might have learned—and whether some of those lessons can help us look forward.

And now, suddenly, October 13 is almost here.

The manuscript is finished. The edits are finished. The cover is finished. Soon the book will leave the relatively safe confines of my desk and belong to its readers.

That may be the most interesting part of this entire journey.

Because I know what I put into the book.

I don't know what readers will take out of it.

One person may connect with a story from Pennsylvania. Another may recognize something from years in local government. Someone else may disagree with me completely.

That's okay.

Maybe someone will see something I missed.

That's okay too.

After all, people sitting in different sections of a stadium don't always see the same play the same way.

Sometimes climbing a little higher helps us see more of the field.

So October 13 will be an ending of sorts.

A long journey from a small Pennsylvania town, through seventy-five years of life and eventually onto the pages of a book will finally reach publication day.

But I'm beginning to think it may also be another opening day.

Because the book may be finished, but the conversation isn't.

There are more stories to tell.

More questions to ask.

And perhaps a few more lessons to learn.

For now, the gates are about to open.

A new season is beginning.

I'll see you in the Cheap Seats.