Guest columnist
Some of my best friends are (gasp!) Republicans

By Ira B. Shapiro
Special to The Times

Ira B. Shapiro

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Some recent personal incidents beyond the election have shown me how difficult it will be to overcome the extreme political polarization now in America. Yet, I believe we can make progress on an individual level.

I was on a private bus to the airport, when the trip's organizer announced loudly, "I want everyone to know that Ira is a Democrat... but he's OK, you can talk to him."

Taking advantage of the rare Democrat in their midst, some of these Republicans later vented with such passion that I asked them to stop talking politics so we could all enjoy our vacation in Uruguay. But we learned a lot about one another before the tenor of the dialogue got away.

I was a guest at a dinner party a month later in which all of us were Democrats. I was uncomfortable with some radical ideas proposed and some anti-Bush invectives spittled out. At one point, I mentioned a thought that a Republican friend might have offered had he been there, and I was confronted with an astonishing question:

"How do you know a Republican?"

I guessed the intelligent former journalist and book author was putting me on. "Is that a serious question?" I asked him.

"Yes, I really want to know."

"Well, the farmers, carpenters, plumbers, some shopkeepers; I know a couple of lawyers, doctors, all four boards I've been on are predominantly Republican. Do you really not know any?" He said he did not.

Nor did a 35-year-old market researcher in Chappaqua I questioned. A 72-year-old violinist in the Upper West Side of Manhattan knew two — one the doorman to his 100-plus unit co-op.

At a local symposium about "Iraq and the Media" that was attended by maybe 50 mostly gray-haired Democrats, I asked a question and mentioned that a "Republican I know... " The room was instantly silenced and frozen.

The hostility and suspicion I felt was palpable. I was more than a trespasser — I was a spy from the enemy in the camp of these liberal thinkers.

Afterward with a cookie in hand, the journalist from the dinner party asked me "if I would introduce him to a Republican." He still did not seem to be teasing me.

Weeks later at another dinner of six couples, one artist admitted that she "would never have a Republican in her house for dinner" and clearly wrote me off for doing it myself. When I explained that one Republican friend was a college roommate, she and her husband admitted that old friends might be an exception, "but how could you talk with him? What would you have in common?"

I thought liberal meant open to new ideas and respecting others' opinions. These liberals I've met recently seem close-minded, insulated and living in a very dark vacuum. Isn't that how bigots behave?

You have to know your enemy if you want to defeat him, and certainly if you want to live peacefully with him, like a neighbor. We shouldn't be fighting members of the other party. It's the terrorists and militant Islamics who are our common enemy. If Republicans and Democrats can't get along, how can Arabs and Israelis, or Middle Easterners and Westerners? Am I naïve to believe that someday they can?

We have to change how we are behaving. This polarization in America is too intense. Talk to people with contrary opinions and values. When you understand the differences, it's easier to create solutions to agreed-upon goals. Leaders can galvanize and speed up the process, but we don't have to wait until they do it for us. Just ask your adversary a question.

Ira B. Shapiro became director of the Nikon Photo Gallery after selling pizza at the 1962 Seattle World's Fair. He was founder and president of American Showcase, publisher of photography, illustration, graphic design and avant garde art books. He also co-founded a video-game company and was associate publisher of "A Day in the Life of the Soviet Union," a 1987 photo book on the lives of everyday Soviets. He lives near Litchfield, Conn.