Indiana Sen. Spencer Deery, R-Lafayette, sent me a note the other day.
In it, he took me to task — gently, respectfully and fairly — for a line I’d written about him in a column.
That column discussed the distressing tendencies of both Republicans and Democrats to engage in pointless intramural feuds rather than focus on questions of importance and interest to the people they’re supposed to serve. I said I hoped that, if former Indianapolis Mayor Greg Ballard’s candidacy for Indiana secretary of state accomplished nothing else, it would remind thinking people in both parties that talking and working with people who disagreed with them not only wasn’t a crime, but that it was the essence of self-government.
In making that argument, I focused a portion of the column on the political and legal tussle between Deery and Paula Copenhaver, a member of Indiana Lt. Gov. Micah Beckwith’s staff and a Donald Trump devotee who ran against him in the May GOP primary.
Deery won the primary by three votes, but Copenhaver challenged the results. She got two Trump partisans in the recount process to toss six ballots for Deery on the flimsiest and most farcical of grounds. That got the struggle moved to the courts, where the Indiana Supreme Court ruled in favor of both Deery and, yes, the voters themselves.
In the column, I noted that the substantive policy differences between Deery and Copenhaver weren’t likely to be great and I used that observation to set up a joke:
“Time and again, Deery demonstrated that he would kiss Trump’s ring to demonstrate his loyalty. Copenhaver, like Beckwith, was willing to pucker up lower.”
Copenhaver’s self-abasing obsequiousness to Trump was the punchline, but to get there, I used Deery as an unwilling stage prop.
And that was the part to which he objected.
On valid grounds.
He pointed out in his note that he had served as deputy chief of staff for former Gov. Mitch Daniels during Daniels’ first tenure as Purdue University’s president. He said he’d run for office as a Mitch Daniels conservative with a focus on bringing people together to solve actual problems.
Deery pointed out that he had been the first Indiana elected official to object to Trump’s thuggish attempt to gerrymander the state’s congressional maps outside the constitutionally mandated redistricting process.
He said that he was “an unapologetic, true believer in the United States and Indiana Constitutions. Our system only works if the powers intended to be separate from the executive branch are willing to actually operate independently. Congress has failed in that duty. The states must never become similarly subservient.”
All of this was true.
So, I did what decency demanded.
I apologized to him.
I said that I’d tried to make a point about the Indiana GOP’s willingness to tolerate and even abet unconscionable actions by the president and his allies and, in trying to be cute, I’d done both him and the truth a disservice.
In response, Deery was gracious.
He accepted my apology and, after a bit more digital conversation, we agreed to get together after the election and talk as people of good faith should, with respect and consideration for each other’s views.
My guess is that, when Deery and I do talk, I will discover that there are positions he holds with which I disagree.
And I can pretty well guarantee that there are beliefs I have with which the senator would take issue.
But that’s not the whole story.
Doubtless, there are also going to be issues in which Deery and I agree or ones with gaps between where we stand that are small enough to be bridged.
If we’re able to bridge those gaps, then maybe the policy differences that seem like chasms won’t seem quite so vast and we can begin working through those, too.
The possibility of that happening came about because Spencer Deery courteously and respectfully took issue with something I’d written and — again, courteously and respectfully — asked me to account for it.
And because I realized I’d treated him unfairly and apologized to him for doing so.
In other words, two adults disagreed and resolved the issue by relying on time-tested principles of decorum and decency.
Thus endeth the lesson for today.