Donna Brazile opens Rider’s Unity Day; disavows ‘negativity’

By Lea Kahn, Staff Writer
   Donna Brazile is the first person to acknowledge that unity is not easy to achieve.
   Ms. Brazile, who was the keynote speaker at Rider University’s Unity Day kickoff Tuesday night, recalled her encounter with President George W. Bush through her service on the Louisiana Recovery Authority.
   Ms. Brazile, who is a veteran of several Democratic presidential campaigns dating back to President Jimmy Carter’s campaign in 1976, met with President Bush to discuss how to rebuild the state following two devastating hurricanes.
   ”Unity is hard,” Ms. Brazile said. “Sitting down with people you disagree with is even harder. (But) I believe when you have a common purpose, you can find common ground. Unity is understanding the nature of the problem and forging a common goal.”
   Ms. Brazile told the audience that as she was on her way into the Bart Luedeke Student Center to speak to them, she passed by a handful of Rider University students who were protesting the school’s policy on speakers. (See related story.)
   ”I walked up to the students,” she said. “It was important that I stopped to talk to them and to tell them what I was going to speak about. It’s important in a historic presidential election season to talk to people you don’t agree with.
   ”In 21 days, this country will turn a page,” Ms. Brazile said, whether voters back “the first bi-racial president” or whether they elect a woman to be “one heartbeat a way from becoming president. You betcha.”
   Looking out into the audience in the auditorium, Ms. Brazile commended the students for demonstrating unity by backing U.S. Sen. Barack Obama in his quest for the presidency.
   If the students can keep up their energy and enthusiasm, they may be able to help elect the first bi-racial president of the United States, she said. She also cautioned them to disregard the negativity prevalent in the media, and to go out and vote.
   ”It is so important to set the right tone in the 21 days before the election,” Ms. Brazile said, adding that voters should not focus on issues that won’t make much difference in the long run — the race and gender of the presidential candidates.
   It is more important to talk about the candidates’ policies, she said. But because of the race and gender of the candidates — a black presidential candidate on one ticket and a woman vice-presidential candidate on the other ticket — “we are going to have to talk about race and gender.”
   Ms. Brazile said the focus should be on what type of leader Sen. Obama would be, or what would happen if Republican nominees Sen. John McCain and Gov. Sarah Palin win the White House.
   ”If you are going to grapple with race and gender, do it in an honest way,” she said. “Do they have a real plan (to address economic issues), not a made-for-TV plan. It should be a conversation, not tit for tat.”
   Ms. Brazile also told the audience of a letter she received from a school teacher, who commented that the tone of the presidential election was creating divisiveness in her classroom.
   In response, Ms. Brazile said, she wrote a letter to the two presidential campaigns urging them to change the tone of their campaigns. Politics is not about fighting or tearing down one’s opponent — it’s about discussing the issues and who has the best solution for the country, she wrote.
   Ms. Brazile also told the audience that as a black child growing up in Louisiana, she never thought she would see the day when a black man would run for the highest elected office in the country.
   But then, her parents always told Ms. Brazile and her siblings that they could do whatever they wanted, if they studied hard enough. Some doors would open, but others would be closed. Sometimes, it’s hard to kick open the door, she said.
   Meanwhile, the door to the Democratic presidential nomination opened up as Sen. Obama and U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton battled it out for the presidential nomination — something she could never have imagined growing up in the Deep South, she said.
   Still, attempts were made “to divide us, by bringing up irrelevant” issues during the primary campaign, Ms. Brazile said. The focus was not on whether Sen. Clinton was bright enough, but on her pantsuits and her accessories, she said.
   While Democratic voters showed they were ready for a change in the presidential primaries last spring, Ms. Brazile challenged the audience and asked them if they were ready for “the next chapter.”
   ”The next president will inherit a divided country, a weakened dollar, two wars with no end in sight and trade and budget deficits that continue to grow as we speak,” she said. “If you look at the polls, 70 percent of the people feel the United States is off track. That’s not Democrats or Republicans — that’s an American response.
   ”These are serious times and serious times call for serious leadership and they call on us to be part of the solution, not part of the problem,” she said. “We have to reject small petty politics.”
   Whoever wins the presidential election will need to reach out to his opponent, Ms. Brazile said. The winner will have to seek out “the best and the brightest” from both parties to serve, she said.
   The solutions will not come from the left or the right, but from the people, she said. The president is going to have to put the people’s interests at the head of the table. Leaders may rely on polls, but those polls do not reflect the pulse of the people, she said.
   The next president will have to govern from somewhere close to the center and try to bring the country together, she said. Otherwise, the result will be four more years of “throwing darts and wild accusations, and we won’t get anything done.”
   ”Let’s not let it fester for 21 days and accuse one side of playing the race or gender card,” she said. “Let’s do the right thing. Let’s create one sound, one music, one note.”