Federal Insider: Veterans Day brings some relief from a negative political campaign

Veterans Day – a great time to reflect on the sacrifices of others or that great sale at the mall.

Coming just three days after an election that left the nation bitterly divided, Friday’s holiday was a bit of relief.

Although wounds remain raw, the parades and ceremonies invited those weary of an especially negative campaign season to focus on the veterans whose service allows us to have unpredictable elections. Many government offices and schools were closed, parking meters were free and some places like the District postponed trash collection.

“Whenever the world makes you cynical, whenever you doubt that courage and goodness and selflessness is possible, stop and look to a veteran,” President Obama said at Arlington National Cemetery.

Certainly, the election of Donald Trump, whose reputation defies the definition of goodness and selflessness, left many with a degree of cynicism that looking to a veteran won’t cure. Without mentioning the president-elect, Obama noted how a political campaign “lays bare disagreements across our nation.”

But “when the election is over,” he added, “as we search for ways to come together — to reconnect with one another and with the principles that are more enduring than transitory politics — some of our best examples are the men and women we salute on Veterans Day.”

How America treats those men and women has been especially controversial since a scandal broke in 2014 over the cover-up of long wait times for patients at Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) hospitals. The VA’s inspector general’s office has completed more than 80 criminal investigations related to the outrage.

Noting the tragedy of 20 veterans taking their lives every day, Obama said “we have to get them the help they need. We have to keep solving problems like long wait times at the VA. We have to keep cutting the disability claims backlog. We have to resist any effort to outsource and privatize the health care we owe America’s veterans.”

Trump promises every veteran will have “the choice to seek care at the VA or at a private service provider of their own choice.”

Obama also had good news, including an 85 percent increase in funding for veterans. “We’ve cut veteran homelessness almost in half. Today, more veterans have access to health care and fewer are unemployed,” he said. “We helped disabled veterans afford prosthetics. We’re delivering more mental health care services to more veterans than ever before because we know that not all wounds of war are visible.”