You'd never know it from most daily press coverage or from the speeches and off-handed verbal stabs in the halls of Congress, but for many months several dozen Republicans and Democrats in Congress have regularly met to forge common bonds and discuss future policy outside the charged, partisan atmosphere of the Capitol.

The Center for Michigan is beginning to foster the same kind of cooperation in Lansing. In November, the Center launched an initiative to bring legislators of both parties together, along with statewide community leaders and everyday citizens, in an ongoing series of monthly dinners in downtown Lansing.

The purpose is to steadily build the kinds of bipartisan bonds, and idea-sharing, that so many insiders say have been ruined by term limits. We've held two dinners so far, with total attendance of seven legislators and about 20 members of the Center for Michigan. The discussion is off-the-record, anonymous, and enlightening on all sides. Turns out legislators are often as frustrated as the rest of us about the gridlock and lack of vision in Lansing. They have ideas for many reforms and new ways of doing business. And they're eager for feedback and help from local leaders across the state.

If you get the Center's weekly newsletter, you're invited. Just drop us a line and we'll put you on the growing list of attendees. We plan to continue the dinners throughout 2008.

As the New York Times recently explained, the partisan division in the US "didn't occur overnight." Neither did the gridlock in Lansing. We see these dinners as one bit of warmth to thaw relations and move toward a bipartisan, problem-solving legislature in the future.