As I was watching TV Monday night and saw Sens. John McCain, Joseph Lieberman, Olympia Snowe, Susan Collins and others announcing they had reached a bipartisan agreement about the filibuster, I knew that was the kind of politics of which I could be proud. Those 14 senators had purposed to work together to find a way to cease contending and ended up reaching an agreement that transcended political parties. I was encouraged to hear Lindsey Graham acknowledge the importance of putting the country first and maintaining a well-functioning Senate for the good of the people. That is what American politics should be about.

While we ought to be able to have confidence that Congress is working for our best interest, that is becoming increasingly difficult as it is the tendency of some of the media to divide the county into far liberal leftists and religious right wingers in order to contrive a battle that sells the news but ends up dividing America and Congress. That media thrive on controversy, and so have created a divided country, a country which is unstable because it has no unifying force to hold it together.

Many people fault President Bush for dividing the country, yet those who fault him are just as much to blame for the separation. They’ve stirred up a hatred against Bush and have made it impossible for us to unite behind our president, something which is very important for the well-being of our country, particularly with our troops in harms way.

I’m glad I can support both of our Maine senators for working together with their colleagues to create a bipartisan agreement. The force of division has already begun, and it can only be stopped by working together more, as was done by those 14 senators.

Though we’ve sought to arouse patriotism since 9-11, we can’t fully succeed until we, as a country, have something of which to be truly proud. In the 1980s, when patriotism was returning and the nation was gaining a sense of pride once again, we were becoming unified as a country with Ronald Reagan as our president working to end the Cold War. There was, at that time, a newfound hope that maybe the country could overcome its differences and stand tall in the liberties on which this nation was founded.

We have the fallacious idea that if we simply choose to have faith in the country, hanging out our American flags and thinking good thoughts about America, then we will be unified. However, a country cannot be unified over blindness. In order to be truly proud patriots, we need to acknowledge our difficulties and struggle with them. We need to both face and deal with the fact that our country, as a result of partisanship, is no longer the great country it used to be . We can’t whitewash our problems and pretend everything’s OK. Nor can we rebel against the system, hoping in doing so we’ll work up some sort of change. No, in order to become a truly great country, we have to do a lot more of what was done by those 14 senators.

I salute Sens. Snowe and Susan Collins for their efforts to work with their fellow senators to bring a compromise that has not only brought the Senate together, but which has brought the whole country together. Their service to the people of Maine and to all the United States is greatly appreciated. I’m greatly inspired by their great work, and I encourage them both to continue it.

Gabrielle Clemons, of Hermon, is a 16-year-old home-schooled high school sophomore who volunteers at Sen. Olympia Snowe’s Bangor office.