Events, Views on News • April 11th, 2008

Observations from Madison

by Chris Lato

I had the pleasure of attending the Wisconsin Women in Government event last night at the Monona Terrace. Packed house, saw plenty of old pals and made a couple of new connections. It was a big night at the Terrace, between this event and the Wisconsin Medical Society Foundation fundraiser raging away upstairs. Those docs know how to party!

Attorney General Van Hollen was there, taking a bit of good-natured ribbing about his stance on the Sirius-XM satellite radio merger that has been pending since the dawn of man. (By the way, as an avid Sirius listener, I say the merger can’t happen fast enough.) First Lady Jessica Doyle, former First Lady Sue Ann Thompson, and Chief Justice Shirley Abrahamson were among the top Wisconsin women in attendance.

The keynote speaker last night was Jenna Bush. Her transformation from First Party Girl to poised, reasonably articulate First Daughter is pretty much complete. She spoke of her experiences working with AIDS-ravaged nations as part of UNICEF. Ms. Bush received a warm welcome from a crowd that, it is safe to say, included many who vehemently disagree with her father’s administration. As I sat in the audience, I half-expected someone to leap up in protest and start screaming “No blood for oil!” It was Madison, after all. But nope, it never happened. No protestors outside, either. The cold and heavy rain must have scared them off. The crowd was respectful.

Wisconsin Women in Government does a fair job of walking the bipartisan line, basically picking Republican-leaning folks to speak one year, and Democrat speakers the next. For example, last year, Elizabeth Edwards spoke.

These observations all tied together for me as I think back on an interesting conversation I had with a Democrat lobbyist who’s been around for a while, seen his share of power changeovers in Madison and spoke a simple truth: you have to learn to work with both sides of the aisle.

You may not agree with your political counterpart, but there are ways to find common ground. Not to get all ‘Kumbaya’ on you, but that was the unspoken message of the evening. For one brief, shining moment, we all got along. Or maybe it was the wine talking.

This entry was posted on Friday, April 11th, 2008 at 11:33 am and is filed under Events, Views on News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.