This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2017, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.

That was some pep rally at Brighton High School Thursday night.

The occasion was a town hall meeting hosted by Rep. Jason Chaffetz, and it was swamped by Chaffetz opponents who demanded to know why the congressman wasn't using his House Oversight Committee chairmanship to look under rocks of the Trump administration.

What went on inside could be described more as catharsis than dialogue. The crowd shouted Chaffetz down with chants of "Do your job" in the middle of his answers.

Give Chaffetz credit for trying. It's not like he brought anyone over to his side with his unspecific promises to keep an eye on the White House. But he did hear them out, at least for a while. The crowd was so large that only about half got in Brighton's auditorium to hear him. The half outside demanded that Chaffetz give them some time, too, but he passed.

Earlier in the day, Chaffetz and Rep. Chris Stewart made their annual pilgrimages to the friendlier environment on Utah's Capitol Hill to give their reports from Washington. The word there, too, was the pledge to treat Trump as they did the last president if they think he's run afoul.

For Chaffetz, it meant one more defense of his near-obsession over the 2012 raid in Benghazi, Libya. (A $7 million House investigation of Benghazi found mistakes but no criminal intent or dereliction of duty.)

Stewart, a member of the House Intelligence Committee, said President Obama "left the world a darker and more dangerous place," but then Stewart was all too willing to shrug off Trump's recent equating of the Russian government's moral turpitude with that of the United States. ("We got a lot of killers," Trump said. "What, you think our country is so innocent?")

"I assume he doesn't actually believe there is a moral equivalency between Vladimir Putin and the United States," Stewart told the Capitol audience. "But he says some things that agitate emotions from time to time."

No. Both congressmen have to realize they are not treating the current and past administrations equally. Blame partisanship, and perhaps some fear of retaliation from a president who doesn't take opposition kindly.

That's a problem. Both men acknowledge that not all their constituents agree with them, but neither shows genuine interest in finding solutions to bridge those differences.

Similarly, their opponents aren't going to make progress, either, if they can't get past the shouting. These are indeed unique times, but if negotiating with the other side is viewed as legitimizing evil, our political stalemate will not end soon.

We need to find the common ground and build on it. Staying in our own cliques is just so high school.