We highly recommend our friend Jason Grumet's latest book on governance, "City of Rivals: Restoring the Glorious Mess of American Democracy". Jason is founder (along with almost every living former Senate Majority Leader, including our own late Howard Baker) and president of the highly respected Bipartisan Policy Center.

Here's a thoughtful, counter-intuitive suggestion on how to make our government work again, from Jonathan Rauch at the Brookings Institution.

The real problem with these carpetbaggers is their demand for ideological purity, making it impossible for legislators of good conscience to sit down and arrive at workable solutions. The misleading ads and outright lies about Insure Tennessee are prime examples.

Nashville Tennessean: Is there too much outside money in Tennessee politics?

The carpetbagging Koch Brothers twist the truth - play hardball in Tennessee. The headline is bland, but read the story below.

Nashville Tennessean: Americans for Prosperity Aims for Tennessee Influence

This post originally appeared in The Tennessean on November 18th, 2012

It is heartbreaking for me as a military professional to see the spectacle swirling around Gen. David Petraeus as his years of honorable service dissolve into long, drawn-out, tawdry depictions of his extramarital affair in the national media. Our fixation on this event has diverted the focus we need for other efforts. Enough is enough; we need to leave voyeurism behind, move on to real issues, and solve the critical problems facing America.

This post originally appeared in The Tennessean on June 22nd, 2012.

At the height of the Great Depression, President Roosevelt famously said, “We have nothing to fear but fear itself.” That sentence in its entirety read, “So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.”  This past year it seems the “Great Recession” has generated nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror among some of our fellow Tennesseans.