It is relatively easy to take the kinder, gentler approach in a small homogenous state where kind and gentle are practically a tradition. Indeed, Vermont's political culture sometimes threatens to degenerate into cloying and treacly. Still, there is something to be said for civility, and state officials are serious about it, as they recently demonstated in the generally civilized debate over gay and lesbian partnerships. To take just one oddity: Representative Poirer is a Democrat, which is unsurprising for a committee chair in a legislative body with a Democratic majority. But his Senate counterpart, Health and Welfare committee chair Helen Riehle, is a Republican, though the Democrats run that house, too.
In Vermont, this is no big deal. It isn't that there's no partisanship. It's just that partisanship is restrained. This may be the only state in which the center aisles do not divide the parties in the legislative chambers: Senators sit by county, and House members draw their seats by lot. It's harder to get bitterly angry at the person sitting next to you everyday.
That's what I'm talking about, except that I think it would work even for large and diverse states and for the nation as a whole.
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