Harry's gang: Navigating politics can be like marriage counseling

As a divorce attorney, I find myself asking my clients a lot of questions that really don’t have anything to do with the legalities of their case. I like to know why the parties got married in the first place. I ask if the client has a new “friend” or if the parties are still living together. I even ask how the couple met, sometimes, because it helps put the client’s relationship in perspective.

When things get tense, I often remind my clients that they married their spouse for a reason. When children are involved, it’s helpful, sometimes, to point out that the child is a product of both parents, and will likely have characteristics of each parent. I usually point out that the soon-to-be-ex will be attending their child’s graduation, wedding, and other important events.

In other words, even though this couple doesn’t want to be together anymore, it’s likely they will be interacting well after the divorce is finalized.

When things turn bad, it takes a special breed of lawyer, a divorce lawyer, to unravel the relationship. That’s because family law is a special blend of law and emotions; a simple contract between a man and a woman that gets complicated by a crazy little thing called love. Some end in divorce, but many marriages survive long after the love has gone, fueled by momentum and familiarity.

Politics are kinda like that, too.

Someone recently sent me a link to an article called “What American Politics Needs is a Good Marriage Counselor.” I laughed out loud. Without reading the article, though, I started thinking about marriage and politics.

The first thing a good marriage counselor does is ask each party: “Tell me one good thing about your spouse.”

It might be a struggle. People attend marriage counselling because they want to save the marriage, but they often go into it thinking the counselor will “fix” the other person. That rarely happens. In fact, counselors often tell spouses that both of them have work to do too: that she isn’t going to ‘fix’ the other spouse, but she’s trying to ‘fix’ the marriage itself.

In politics, we have to remember that, like a marriage, we are all in this together. No matter how many times we point out the other side is wrong, they can point out how wrong we are. No amount of accusations are going to fix our country. So, maybe we try to find some good in the other side’s positions?

Or maybe sometimes we just keep our mouths shut.

My good friend Jerry Kortesmaki, owner of London Road Rental and staunch Tea Party conservative, called me the other day. He had a pretty funny story he’d been dying to tell me, and I have to admit he made me laugh. After a few minutes of getting caught up, we had to let each other go. Once we hung up, it dawned on me that neither one of us mentioned politics. That’s unusual; we nearly always talk politics, and we often have a pretty good time doing it.

But I was pleased I didn’t bring up any politics, and I bet Jerry was relieved, too. We haven’t spoken in a while, and maybe it’s because neither one of us wanted to get into an argument. We can’t always predict when our political differences will result in an unpleasant argument, just like a marriage can’t always guarantee a holiday party will end in bliss.

In a marriage, once we assume that every holiday party will end in a bitter fight, it’s pretty obvious it’s time to stop going to parties together.

In politics, if neither party can work with the other side and find some good in their positions, the end is near. Something’s got to change.

In politics, divorce is not an option. But we could probably benefit from a little counselling.

Pete Radosevich is the publisher of the Pine Knot News and an attorney in Esko who hosts the cable access talk show Harry’s Gang on CAT-7. His opinions are his own. Contact him at [email protected].