Learn to “Do Politics in the Gray Area,” Author Urges
John Andrews, former Colorado Senate President, White House speechwriter, and think-tank entrepreneur, has published a book of short stories aimed at cooling down the overheated political polarization of our times.
Senator Leland Votes Aye: Stories from Under the Dome takes the reader inside the legislative battles of an unnamed heartland state where George Leland, a pastor-turned-politician, faces tough decisions not foreseen in the standard partisan playbook.
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On issues from abortion to antiracism, crime to homelessness, ethics laws to religious freedom, the fictional lawmaker must decide between one course of action, the seemingly obvious course if politics is war—and a different course, the road less taken, the right thing to do if people matter.
“Senator Leland is as conservative as they come, always a reliable vote for liberty and limited government,” says Andrews. "But he keeps finding himself in situations that no ideological checklist seems to cover. The human factor is just too complicated.
“At times like that, you’re forced to go deeper, all the way down to bedrock, to the Golden Rule,” the author adds. “Each of my eight stories puts George in a bind where he’s asking himself, as I often did when serving in the state Senate, how much of your soul are you going to lose today?”
Convinced that ideology and partisanship are not all there is to self-government in a free society, John Andrews turned to fiction for an exploration of that other dimension where the personal and the political collide.
"To get along as fellow citizens even with intense disagreement, we have to cultivate humility, listening, and goodwill,” he says. “Can we get beyond simplistic black-and-white attitudes? Can we learn to do politics in the gray area? I think we have to.”
The former senator distills his short stories from the lessons of a long life in politics, dating back to when he attended the Republican National Convention as a teenage Goldwater supporter in 1960. He is available for media interviews or speaking engagements to discuss Senator Leland Votes Aye and the questions it raises.
