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| |  Dignity Index creator Tami Pyfer sings along during a rehearsal of the the Tabernacle Choir at Temple Square on Nov. 17, 2022 in Salt Lake City. | Photographs by Kim Raff for POLITICO | If you could take the temperature of political discourse in this country, it'd probably break the thermometer. Whether you're talking about Congress, where gridlock seems to be the norm, or a Facebook comment section, where unadulterated rage seems to be the norm, the divisiveness in American political life is so painfully obvious that remarking on it verges on cliché. And it's not just that we've gotten a bit coarse. Support for partisan violence is approaching levels recorded in Northern Ireland at the height of its troubles. In the last five years, threats against members of Congress have multiplied by 10. Tami Pyfer is fighting to change all that. The 61-year-old former special-ed teacher, high-level Republican appointee and Mormon grandmother of 10 wants to remind us — and our politicians, in particular — how to treat one another with dignity and mutual respect. This fall, she and her colleagues at Unite, an organization aimed at easing divisiveness, tested out a new tool for achieving that goal, just in time for the midterms in Utah. They call it the "Dignity Index." It's designed to rate a politician's rhetoric on a scale from the contemptuous level one (advocating violence or casting the other side as less than human) to the dignified level eight ("I can see myself as part of every group, I refuse to hate anyone, and I offer dignity to everyone.") And it's already borne interesting results: Of the 120 snippets of speech it reviewed in Iowa Congressional races over the course of a month, none of them hit rock bottom — but none got higher than a seven, either. In this deep dive on Pyfer and the team that built the tool, Amanda Ripley confronts us with the ways our political system incentivizes us to act as our worst selves. You can even rate political speech yourself, and see how close you got to the index. Go ahead and get familiar, because this is just the beginning for the Dignity Index. Unite's goal, according to founder Tom Shriver, is to "put dignity on the ballot in 2024." Read the story.
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| "HR wasn't always his strong suit." Can you guess who said this about Donald "You're Fired" Trump? Scroll to the bottom for the answer.**
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With D.C.'s downtown still much quieter than it was pre-pandemic, Mayor Muriel Bowser has urged the government to bring federal employees back to work in person. | Evan Vucci/AP Photo | DC to Feds: Get Back to Work … Mayor Muriel Bowser made a striking ultimatum of sorts to the federal government this month: Come back to work, or give up your lifeless offices so that downtown can fill up with residents. It's a gamble for the leader of a liberal city that sure seems to like remote work, especially one who will have to rely on president Joe Biden's veto power to reign in any meddling in local affairs by the new House GOP. "But the way the local government sees it, something has to give or else the city is in deep trouble," writes Michael Schaffer in this week's Capital City column.
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| 27 percent … of Democratic voters plan to read (or have already read) Prince Harry's memoir, Spare, compared to 16 percent of independent and 19 percent of Republican voters.
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POLITICO illustration/Photos by Wikimedia Commons/iStock | How FDR Would Handle Ukraine … With a growing number of conservative voters turning cold on Ukraine and GOP lawmakers like Kevin McCarthy promising that the war-torn country won't receive a "blank check" from the U.S., President Joe Biden faces a dilemma: How to support the West's bulwark against Russian aggression? According to historian Joshua Zeitz, he should look to the 1930s, when FDR cleverly maneuvered around isolationists in Congress to support Britain's fight against the Nazis.
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| Nothing says 0.1 percent like being a white badge-holder in Davos — but why trek to the Swiss Alps and spend $270,000 when POLITICO can do the hard work for you? Drop these into conversation and you'll sound like a Davos insider. (From Ryan Heath.) - Mention how disappointed you were that the 100-point wine at The Mooch's wine-tasting ran out before 11 p.m. - Pick your Klaus Schwab successor: Are you a Christine Lagarde supporter, or more of a Jacinda Ardern stan? - Hedge your crypto bets: Sure, it's great that exchanges are reducing their carbon footprint, but can you really trust them? - Join the Pride on the Promenade party: It's like Woodstock — now that's it over, everyone says they were there. - And breathe a sigh of relief: it's about time Europe shouldered the burden of dealing with Joe Manchin.
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Francia Elena Márquez Mina is the first Black woman to become Vice President of Colombia. | Sarah Blesener for POLITICO | From Activist to VP of Colombia … As the first Black woman to be elected vice president of Colombia, Francia Elena Márquez Mina has become a symbol of hope for millions of Afro-Colombians, as well as a strong voice of an ascendant Latin American left. In this wide-ranging interview with Jesús Rodríguez, she discusses the American civil rights leaders who inspired her, the economic crisis in Venezuela, her staunch support of reparations abroad and the role Washington should play in combating climate change. "I know there's been some reckoning, some conversations about acknowledging that this country is responsible for slavery and racism and now also climate change," she says. "But now it's necessary to translate that reckoning into concrete action."
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This engraved invitation to the 1973 inauguration of Richard Nixon and Spiro Theodore Agnew has made its way to ebay. | b_hoff_11, ebay | Politics is a rough business. Fifty years ago this week, only a few insiders received one of these coveted engraved invitations to the 1973 inauguration of Richard Nixon and Spiro Theodore Agnew. It was their second time around, after a smashing victory in November 1972, giving Nixon and Agnew four more years. Nixon aides thought grandly that an "Age of Nixon" was beginning. It was not to be. Within a year, Agnew was gone (he resigned on October 10 to avoid charges of bribery, extortion and tax evasion), and Nixon wasn't doing much better. Although he 37th president limped along until August 1974, by the end of 1973 his reputation was in tatters from a never-ending stream of Watergate revelations. The inauguration was a distant memory. But you can buy an invitation on eBay for $39, or best offer. (From historian Ted Widmer.)
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**Who Dissed answer: It was Rep. Matt Gaetz, who played Kevin McCarthy's antagonist in the drawn-out speakership election, brushing off the former president's support of him during an interview with Fox News' Laura Ingraham.
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