Two leaders of America’s major parties agreed on one thing Thursday night. They want the 500 or so audience members in UALR’s University Theatre Thursday night to speak their minds, get engaged and embrace debate.

Michael Steele, chair of the Republican National Party, and Harold Ford Jr. chair of the Democratic Leadership Council, spent most of their 90 minutes on stage taking questions for a lineup of students on each side the auditorium.

Partisans in the audience were evenly distributed, and a number of questions came from independents. The two speakers called each other personal friends and embraced at the end of the event.

Steele said his party must return to their core values of smaller government and protecting the rights of the individual. He conceded that might be a tough row to hoe.

“We have to turn around the elephant,” he said. “And once to push the tail out of your face, you still have a lot of stuff you have to deal with.” He said the GOP has to fight against the assumption that when an electorate rejects a Democratic candidate, it doesn’t necessarily mean they are in love with the Republican.

“We live in interesting times,” he said.

Ford, a former congressman from Memphis now a resident of New York City contemplating a race for the U.S. Senate in that state, agreed that the electorate is in turmoil and traditional political ideology is not what the American people want or expect.

“The idea of diversity of the Democratic Party is a good thing,” he said, explaining why controlling the White House, the House, and the Senate was not enough to get a health care bill passed. “The Democratic Party is big enough to include an Evan Bayh and Blanche Lincoln, a Chuck Shummer and a Jay Rockefeller: and a Barbara Boxer and a Diane Feinstein. Geography defines the country more than parties do.”