How do we cross this great divide?

My project manager, who sits in the cube next to me, is a Democrat, and a fairly hardcore one, as he ran for state house last November. I am often privy to conversations he has with a couple other guys in our office, who are very much Republicans. For those who aren't aware, I'm a registered Republican, but primarily due to laziness in not getting it changed. I've been identifying myself as Libertarian for a few years now, and thus take issue with both major parties. I generally stay out of these conversations for a variety of reasons

Anyhow, I obviously disagree with my project manager on a great number of issues, but he does have some ideas that I resonate with, mainly the fact that the political system as it stands is a mess. That's the subject of the conversation I overheard today. In that context, I heard him to say that he and the more conservative co-worker could both agree on what the various problems are, and if they sat down and discussed it they could come to a solution to the problem, whereas that never really happens in the political system.

As reasonable as that sounds, I found myself questioning whether it was true. Can the conservative and the liberal as presently defined (notice I did not say Republican and Democrat) ever come to a viable compromise? My project manager is precisely correct, he and I both see the same problems, but I've come to believe that the fundamental difference between us on how to solve those problems is a gap that a mere compromise can't rightly bridge. That difference is that I trust people to solve their own problems, and he trusts the government. I, of course, have a fundamental distrust of the government.

And so I'm led to ask, how do we cross this great divide? As I sit here, I don't believe it to be possible. Attempting to walk a line between the two sides has led us to this confused, double-minded mess of a system we're in today. Our political system is broken because it lacks a single identity and purpose, and is rather suffering from a kind of split personality disorder. As a nation, and even as states, we collectively ask our government to be involved, but not TOO involved. We're looking for an impossible compromise to occur. We either need to make up our minds and pick a direction (obviously I have a preference on how that needs to go down), or perhaps just recognize that a government that represents about 300 million people is never going to be anything but double-minded, and start to move power back down the chain, closer to the people themselves.