Johnson: Civility needs to return to Washington politics

HURON — No matter if it’s Dusty Johnson or Tim Bjorkman, one of the biggest challenges facing South Dakota’s next congressman could well be figuring out how to help return civility to a hostile environment that is today’s Washington, D.C., politics.
“There are not enough people being decent to each other in Washington, and I don’t know how much I can do other than to lead by example,” Republican candidate Dusty Johnson said Monday.
But it’s paramount that members of Congress — as well as their constituents back home — understand that those in the other party are not the enemy just because they have differing views, he said at the weekly Beadle County Republican Party campaign luncheon.
“I do not think we are going to make this country better by dividing ourselves further into camps,” Johnson said.
“What will make America better in the future is the exact same thing that has made America better in the past, and that is when we come together with the things that are right about America and attack the things that are wrong with America,” he said.
“I can get my dander up from time to time,” Johnson acknowledged. “I have lost my patience and lost my temper, rarely, but still too much, with people with the other party when we’ve been talking about legislation.
“But more often than not I have been proud about the fact that I have been willing to work with them when we can find some common ground,” he said. “And that’s the voice that I’m going to bring to Washington.”
Johnson said recent poll numbers showing him leading Democrat Bjorkman by 23 points may or may not be on the mark. A week remains in the campaign for the state’s sole member of Congress.
“I don’t know that that’s the real number, but I will tell you that we feel like everything is coming together at the right time,” he said.
Commissioned by the Argus Leader and KELO TV, Florida-based Mason-Dixon Polling & Strategy showed 2 percent supporting independent candidate Ron Wieczorek and 1 percent favoring Libertarian George Hendrickson.

Johnson said his Democratic opponent, a retired circuit judge, is an accomplished person. But he said Bjorkman prefers talking about what’s wrong with America.
“I know we’re living in a cynical age,” he said. “And I know a lot of people want to try to find fault. But I think South Dakotans, we’re still more interested in opportunity.
“I think we’re more interested in optimism, we’re still more interested in problem solving than fault finding, and we are really seeing that in the numbers,” Johnson said.
On entitlements, he said he is not proposing any changes in Medicare or Social Security for those who are at least 50 years old. But he said because he expects, at age 42, to live 20 years longer than his grandfather, for example, he said it’s reasonable to ask people to work longer before retiring and applying for Social Security benefits.
It would not impose a burden on anyone, and it would add decades of fiscal sustainability to the program, he said.
“Those are the kinds of politically courageous decisions I think we need more of,” Johnson said.
Also, he said there are 12 million Americans who are able-bodied, non-seniors, not looking for work.
“That suggests to me that maybe we have a welfare system that doesn’t expect enough from people,” he said. “We don’t have work requirements for most of our programs today and I think we should.”
Hard work is central to living a life of dignity, Johnson said.
“If you’re not producing productive labor throughout your lifetime, you are missing a grand opportunity to be somebody special and to help something special,” he said.
In answer to a question about educating the nation’s children, Johnson said it’s a local and state obligation that the federal government has a role in, but not as a lead partner.
“I’m certainly not interested at all in nationally mandated standards,” he said.
He thinks states can work together in developing bilateral agreements.
“It’s not crazy to think that a kid who moves from North Dakota to South Dakota in the middle of the third grade year should have a relatively seamless transition, but I don’t think that should be imposed by the federal government,” Johnson said.
But the education system must do all it can to prepare students for something beyond high school, he said.
When kids go on to training programs or to two- or four-year institutions their lifetime earnings are $1 million higher on average, he said.
Workforce development has been a challenge for communities throughout South Dakota and the nation in recent years.
“We can shrink a lot of that skills gap by just making sure that more of these kids are prepared to do something else,” Johnson said.