Editor:

During my last school board election in 2017, The News asked each candidate about the aspirations for our service. My answer read in part:

“When our students graduate I want them to make living wages for their families and be role models for their children. Ultimately, I want them to demonstrate the judgment, intellect and character our nation needs to sustain our freedom, and that the world requires to live in peace and prosperity into the next generation.”

I am of a generation old enough to remember President Reagan’s “Shining City on a Hill,” the first President Bush’s “Thousand Points of Light,” and the second President Bush’s “Compassionate Conservatism.”

If there is a turn of phrase that will survive the Trump presidency, it is likely to be (at his choice) “American Carnage,” the  theme of his 2017 inaugural address.

I was elected seven times to the Mid-Prairie school board. During my 19 years on the board I tried my best to create an educational environment that would enable our students to lead our society to new and higher levels of achievement.

Another Republican, Abraham Lincoln, said this in his first inaugural address

“We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory…will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”

In this spirit on Feb. 3, I will be caucusing for Pete Buttigieg. I believe he has the intellect, experience, and just plain decency to make our country proud again – guided as we once were “by the better angels of our nature.”

Jim Hussey
Iowa City and Kalona