Seldom in politics do altogether splendid ideas come down the bipartisan pike, but we have one in the online crusade for “Demand Question Time.”
Inspired by President Obama’s spirited face-off with Republican leaders last week, a fairly impressive collection of journalists, columnists, educators, activists and bloggers is asking, in petition form, for more of “these sessions … to be broadcast and webcast live and without commercial interruption, sponsorship or intermediaries.”
Those behind the campaign “to make Question Time a regular feature of our democracy” include personalities as politically diverse as David Corn and Glenn Reynolds, Grover Norquist and Katrina vanden Heuvel, Todd Gitlin and Brent Bozell, as well as online entities ranging from MoveOn to HotAir.
In politics, opposites rarely attract, but in the curious case of Obama’s parliamentary-style clash with House Republicans, those on the responsible outside looking in fell positively, productively and collectively in love. I suspect millions in the “grassroots” audience did as well -- although I just noticed that at the bottom of DemandQuestionTime.com’s main page it is noted: “Comments are closed.”
Sad, but scarcely atypical of the noisy, cage-rattling, unhinged-extremist crowd that has infected online advocacy in profoundly unrepresentative ways and has helped to intoxicate partisan politics to the point of slobbering dementia. It is of fascinating irony that many of those who cry loudest for a higher kind of politics only reduce it to its lowest form.
The organizers of DQT are hoping for better, across the board, and believe they witnessed just that in the Obama-House session, characterized by DQT’s Website as “riveting … educational … substantive, civil and candid. [I]n a rare break from our modern politics, sharp differences between elected leaders were on full public display without rancor or ridicule.”
Well, perhaps a little rancor, and not entirely vacant of ridicule, but any attempt to mix the riveting and candid with unmitigated civility is properly doomed to failure. Compared, however, to talk radio and cable television and the blogosphere, the Obama-House encounter was crumpets and tea.
Yet most of all the session was, as noted, educational – deeply, penetratingly, thoughtfully educational, not only in that Obama proved himself in absolute mastery of policy and issues, but that House Republicans parried with little more than detached ideology.
Saying the GOP is the party of no is one thing – and technically correct – but more so it’s the party of antediluvian cluelessness, especially when it comes to meat-and-potato issues.
I mean, for example, deficit-reduction while in the vicious grip of a great recession? Obama’s “show” reductions were just that – political tokenism to soothe savage couch-accountants – but the GOP now seems, frightfully, to actually mean it (unless it were in the majority, in which case it would be dispensing massively pricey, massively unneeded defense contracts to every bomb-maker in every moderate-to-conservative district; deficit be damned).
When asked about the White House’s interest in additional Question Times, Senior Advisor David Axelrod said “the thing that made [last Friday’s session] interesting was the spontaneity. If you slip into a kind of convention, then conventionality will overtake the freshness of that.”
Let us hope that Mr. Axelrod was only being coy; he’s well aware that any lucid demonstration of interest on Obama’s part would invite but de rigueur disinterest on Republicans’ part. It’s what they do.
Possibly indicative of this were recent comments by Republican-strategist Alex Castellanos, who told the NY Times that both parties could, as the Times paraphrased him, “benefit from stronger efforts at cooperation. But … the latest discussions” – such as the Obama-House discussion? – “seemed to be rooted in political process rather than bridging policy differences.”
It’s OK, Alex, although we realize that the latest “political process” was transcendently embarrassing for your Congressional charges. But how better to educate the electorate about “policy differences” – likely unbridgeable in this hyperpartisan age -- than by permitting viewers to emotionally and intellectually process the often spirited politics behind them?
where have you been
As usual your column is full of thoughtlessness.you say in one part that if the republicans were in power they won't cut the budget and would give out more of those worthless contracts to the defense industry.this is what the republican party and you stand for and your friend Obama stand for,,cut all the social programs and programs that benefit people like the EPA and spend madly on defense or more properly wars.This is the only thing the republicans and so called "moderate" Democrats want to spend money on,they would gladly cut every program that benefits the people.