I put in a call to Mr. Republican. That would be my late father, V. Paul, or Victor Paul. I’d like him to sit in his chair in my living room and talk politics. The wingback’s been in the family for three generations and what he was sitting in when he died of a heart attack while watching the Today show more than 20 years ago in Pennsylvania.

I’m ready for a talk with a life-long proud member of the GOP. V. Paul loved being a Republican and gave me an “I Like Ike” pin when I was little. I sure did like my dad so I wore the pin although it didn’t turn me into a Republican.

I wonder if my dad and Ike know that Susan Eisenhower, the late president’s Republican granddaughter campaigned for Obama. She worried that the political environment was being taken over by angry, noisy extremists. That was over a year ago, in a relatively civilized time before town meetings, Washington marches and presidential addresses turned into a hate-it, hate-him blood sport.

(Speaking of mood swings, I can’t believe it was only this spring I wrote about Americans becoming less rancorous. Boy, did my inner Pollyanna speak too soon.)

But back to V. Paul. I’d liked to ask my dad why he thinks other rational, smart and compassionate Republicans like himself would allow gun-toting fear-mongers to take over their party and foul its legacy. I know there are radicals on both sides but where’s the conservative balance?

Are there no Republicans who cringe when they see this craziness being committed in their name?

I think back to last October when John McCain stood up to the screamers in Minnesota to reassure a woman that Obama was a decent family man and there was no reason to fear him. It reminded me why even some Democrats once thought McCain might make a good president. But the crowd booed McCain. They didn’t want to hear any respectful words about Obama, and that seemed to end it for any high profile Republican daring to set a gracious example.

Too bad. It’s a fine American tradition to disagree. My dad and I used to argue each other’s ideas at the dinner table until he’d finally declare a halt, saying “We’re upsetting your mother.”

I don’t want to demonize Republicans. I don’t want to stereotype them as the No Party. But I don’t get why they give a pass to the rowdy, rude and sometimes racist crowd who seem bent on scaring America.

I don’t believe that all Republicans are out to punish the poor and immigrants and think anyone who needs government help is a deadbeat. But why are there no leaders telling their people to keep it civil and if they want respect to leave the damn guns at home?

My dad and I would certainly disagree over the government taking on health care for all. One of his first jobs was selling insurance in Pittsburgh. The first time I ever heard the term “socialized medicine” was from him. As for Afghanistan and Iraq, it would be the same arguments we had over Vietnam.

But V. Paul argued in a rational, educated way. He didn’t care for coarse vulgar people.
He’d think anyone shouting “you lie” to the president of the United States was pretty much a jackass.

My dad believed that America was the greatest country and the Republican party truly grand but I’d love to know, from his vantage point, if he still thinks that.

Sit down, Dad. We need some help down here.

On a soggy weekend in between rain storms four of us grabbed an umbrella table at a restaurant and haggled over optimism. Three of the four declared ourselves hopeful. The other, a lifelong eyebrow-raiser, asked, “Do you think he can really solve everything?”

Well, not everything, we chimed in. But yes, some things. And what a relief to have someone so very smart and confident, surrounded by brainy people with new, maybe even workable ideas on how to do business and government.

Well, she said, she guessed she was in the minority.

On that weekend close to 70 percent of Americans were reported as approving of President Obama, which put our table pretty much in line with the national ratio. Our admitted skeptic did vote for him and surely would not have wanted the other guy, she said. But how can we all be so sure?

Well, we’re not. Nobody’s sure of anything. In terms of tomorrow, we don’t know what to expect with the economy or another world flu outbreak. But in spite of each new calamity – “good morning Mr. President, today we have pirates” - there does seem to be a new sense of hope and even greater agreement among Americans.

Disagreement is not a bad thing.

It’s not that we don’t hold onto our differences, some deep and insurmountable. But it doesn’t feel as rancorous. My stomach doesn’t clench like it did during the last few years, when I resisted bringing up certain subjects in undeclared living rooms.

We all pretty much agree on evidence global warming, not only by looking out the window at our own freaky weather. We also seem to agree that our fairy tale spending days are over and have stopped blindly trusting Wall Street and Big Banking. At the same time, we’re getting better at trusting each other. More Americans now agree with gay marriage, which, on this, makes Iowa more progressive than California.

On some issues we still remain a tender lot. When I mentioned abortion rights to a colleague I hadn’t seen in years, she warned me off, saying, “We can’t go there.”

Lee, a friend back east, and I were talking about how there are some differences that you may be able to gloss over with an old pal or brother-in-law but not if you’re picking out new best friends. She was at party and met a woman she thought could be new-friend potential. They hit it off, discussing travel and other subjects, but when Lee, who has spent her life in social work, expressed hope for Obama’s social programs, the other woman suddenly turned cold. And that was it. Bad match. Impossible political chasm. End of conversation.

Certainly there are many issues which will continue to separate us. Taxes versus spending. Immigrant reform. The importance of unions. Using government money to teach kids to paint pictures and play the trumpet. What to do about guns. Whether and how to develop the north end of town.

And disagreement is not a bad thing. Yet, it has felt so ugly and pointless during the last years of “my way or the highway” thinking at the top. Now we’ve got a President saying it’s helpful to have differences but we don’t have to get nasty about it.

Back to the conversation under the umbrella. My friend the skeptic finally conceded that she would have to wait and see. She had one parting shot, however.

“Do you really believe he’s a true dog person?” she asked.
Doesn’t matter, we said in chorus. The kids are in charge of the dog.

As Holly Golightly pointed out, there are rats and there are super rats. And these days there are so many rats it’s hard to tell who’s the rattier. The financial sleazebags with their empty promises and empty bank accounts? The toxic mortgage hustlers? The arrogant, bloated CEOs who continue to frolic?

If you’re looking for someone to blame this mess on, there are plenty of rats to go around. Maybe even those politicians who had to be excused from high office for not paying their taxes.

But don’t get mad at your neighbor. Don’t blame the luckless homeowner who bought at too high a price with too little money down. A lot of us did that, but got away with it…at least, so far. This is no time to be throwing rocks at glass houses, considering so many of us are living in them.

And don’t get mad at unions for providing workers a decent enough wage so that teachers and police officers and nurses can live in the same town where they work. And don’t bully the business owners not as savvy as you, who didn’t have the financial cushion to get through hard times.

The worst thing that could happen to this country – worse than a Depression and double digit unemployment – is that we turn on each other. And America the once Strong and Proud becomes America the Stingy and Spiteful.

The rats are happy to see us mice picking on each other.

What good comes from being mean and reckless, calling people “losers,”  like those high profile windbags who stir up an anxious populace. The ones who claim that mortgage reform plans only encourage bad behavior. And who, worse, become part of that still tiny but screeching minority that seem to want President Obama’s ideas to fail so they can do… what? Say goodbye to “hope?”

It’s easier to understand why common people buy houses they can’t afford than it is to understand how the biggest money brains in the world made such colossal blunders to cause a global financial collapse. We all wanted our piece of paradise even though everyone said the housing bubble would burst. But the realtor said it was a deal, the appraiser said it was worth it and the lender said you qualified. So tell me where to sign those loan papers, which would be sold to another lender the next day.

Americans may get annoyed with the excesses of the rich but they take personal affront at the bad luck of the poor. And don’t think that the rats aren’t happy to see us mice picking on each other.

I think this is a test. We can grumble and point fingers or we can tighten our collective belts and get through this crisis without hurting each other. We can believe that, “We will rebuild and we will recover,” as President Obama said in his speech to Congress. And we can do it in a neighborly fashion. Trade our backyard tomatoes for eggs from the guy with chickens down the street.

Getting mad, even at rats, gets us nowhere.