Bipartisanship Cannot Be a Dirty Word

What is one thing – just one – you can agree on with someone on the opposite side of the political divide? The late General Colin Powell once told me, “Figure that out and you can get a lot done. And as you win one victory together, you might just discover along the way that there’s something else you agree on.” Our nation seems utterly divided. Many of the wounds that have been torn open in these last few election cycles are real and painful. But too much focus has been placed on further tearing open those wounds rather than healing them. One way we can heal them is simply by rolling up our sleeves and getting to work on the things we can agree on. One thing Dr. Martin Luther King taught his lieutenants, several of whom trained me when I was a young organizer, is that if you are comfortable in your coalition, your coalition is too small.& We need unlikely allies and uncomfortably large coalitions. Coalitions of what can seem like strange bedfellows get things done. When I served as national president of the NAACP, we brought together prison guard unions, conservative governors, and Democratic legislators to...