This polarization is poisonous. But there are partial victories.

Watching the intense, polarized debates about everything these days, I have been thinking about the very different atmosphere in Washington when I started my professional life.

It was 1986, the peak of the Reagan years, and I was a lowly “reporter-researcher” at the New Republic, then the hottest political magazine in the country. The New Republic was left of center, but some of its most prominent writers — Charles Krauthammer, Fred Barnes, Andrew Sullivan — were staunchly conservative. Every week, at every editorial meeting, they disagreed ferociously yet amicably. In this way they were like President Ronald Reagan, who would lash out against the Democrats and then invite House Speaker Tip O’Neill over to the White House for a drink.

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