Crossing the lines

Politics change the conversation — for now

Sarah Palermo
Sentinel Staff

Faces peered out the windows of Main Street just after noon Saturday, looking out at the folks having a heated conversation on the corner. A lone woman, holding a sign promoting Republicans John McCain, Sarah Palin, John Sununu and Jennifer Horn, was surrounded by a sea of signs for Democrat Barack Obama and other Democratic candidates.

She accused the Democratic campaigners of blocking her sign from the view of motorists, impeding her freedom of speech, and of being carpetbag-campaigners from Massachusetts.

Some Obama campaign volunteers responded that they were from Keene, and tried to start a conversation with the lonely Republican. When it was clear she only wanted to wave her sign in silence, they started cheering louder than ever for Obama.

Watching from the sidewalk, David Parker, a bartender at a Keene restaurant, said he sees the scene played out nightly, as conversations on politics devolve into shouting matches.

“People are just so opinionated right now,” said Parker, who is not supporting either presidential candidate.

Two friends discussing a point can go back and forth over the same issue without listening to each other, each only thinking about converting the other, Parker said.

“Some people just won’t take others’ opinions as what they are.”

Sometimes, political arguments spill out beyond the bar, as when Parker differed with a friend on a political issue.

“I tried to say we’ve been friends too long to let a difference of opinion come between us, but it didn’t work,” he said.

The two no longer talk at all.

In an election season full of personal attacks from the right and the left, are people taking politics too personally?

Has the divisive climate of the political world beyond our borders begun to taint our discourse and ruin relationships here at home?

Overall, the Monadnock Region is an island of political civility — at least according to party officials.

Juliana T. Bergeron, chairwoman of the Cheshire County Republican Party, said she regularly talks politics with friends and business associates, and things rarely turn nasty.

“We talked about the fact that both parties truly do want change,” she said of a recent conversation with Obama supporters. “There’s a lot of ground in the middle.”

No matter how personal and bitter national campaigns or election coverage may get, “in local races, there is a cordiality between candidates,” said Cheshire County Democratic Party Chairman Daniel A. Eaton.

“In Cheshire County particularly,” Eaton said, “there is a phenomenal level of civility and humor.”

Local races are immune to the bitterness of the national election because candidates come from the same small towns, bump into each other at the coffee shop, and have to live together, he said.

“The feelings we have on the issues are very strong, but the lack of cordiality is more with the federal races,” he said.

Some people say they feel the candidates set the tone. Kathleen Manfre, a Peterborough Democrat who is supporting Jeanne Shaheen for U.S. Senate, said she refused to be part of a campaign ad when she found out it would be attacking Shaheen’s Republican opponent, John Sununu.

“I think we’ll always have (negative campaigning), it’s the nature of the beast … I would hope the candidates would try to calm those things, but I don’t think that’s ever going to happen,” Manfre said.

“You do get sick of it, you really do. Even if I don’t like him, I don’t want to sit there and smear him,” she said. “It exacerbates the situation. It gets everybody angrier.”

Manfre blames that anger for recent reports from several campaigns in both parties that campaign signs had been ripped out of the ground, shredded or simply stolen.

But after the election, Eaton said he expects even ardent local supporters of both presidential candidates to put aside their differences and move forward.

“Everybody accepts the fact we are all Americans and you’re going to have one president, and when the election is over everybody’s going to have to pull together,” he said.

The recovery locally might be easier because there is nowhere to hide in a small town from people with different views, Bergeron said.

“For every one of us, we have people we love and work with and are related to who are in the other party,” she said.

Still, during the election season, Bergeron and her friends often lay out ground rules of what can and can’t be discussed when the conversation turns to politics, she said.

Manfre agreed, saying she used to try and engage people with different views, but now “I try to stay away from arguments.

“I don’t try to seek out people who are voting on the other side. Everybody is entitled to whatever decision they make. I can tell them I think they are wrong but they are going to vote the way they want to vote.”

The notion of avoiding controversial topics is just the opposite of one Keene resident’s idea of civility.

Watching the Obama supporters and the lone woman campaigning for the GOP ignore one another, Nicholas Sansone just shook his head.

“I think its just a shame that we don’t talk — that we aren’t allowed talk about politics,” Sansone said, watching the bickering on Main Street continue. “It’s really the one thing we should be talking about.”