We had a bit of discussion earlier in the Cafe about how it’s nice to see politicians on the recommended list at Daily Kos, but that it’s frustrating that they basically come over, post their piece, and leave, never interacting in any meaningful way with the rank and file.
Well, that got me to thinking, and I may have an idea. Read on and see if you agree.
I can see two ways in which BT might be able to drive better contact between us bloggers and the representatives we are trying to influence, or who want our support but we don’t see them as supporting us in return.
I’ll use Nancy Pelosi as an example, pretty much at random because she’s in a position of some power (hobbled by House Slitherin as she might be). There are two ways I think we might be able to get Ms. Pelosi to become part of the group instead of doing drive-bys. Now I should state at the outset that the thought of her, or any other representative or senator, hitting the blogs as much as I do frightens me. I want them fighting for my interests in Congress, not hanging out over here.
That being said, here are two possibilities. Both involve making arrangements with a member of her staff.
The first would be to arrange a date and time at which Ms. Pelosi’s aide would be online, logged in here at BT with a user account, and ready to chat. At that point the staffer would post a message introducing him/herself, and then the questions and comments would start flying. They could give us an idea of what Ms. Pelosi’s stand on various issues is (or get back to us if s/he doesn’t know), answer questions about the day-to-day operation of the House, stuff like that. It wouldn’t be perfect, but it would be something rather than “Here, I’ve called for a bipartisan investigation into the popularity of sauerkraut, and oh by the way contribute to my re-election campaign” thrown over the wall from her office.
This would work best as a regular feature, having different guests each time rather than just relying on contact with a single congresscritter.
The second possibility is to conduct Slashdot-style interviews. Back when I was reading regularly, they would contact a guest to arrange for an interview. Then they would solicit questions from the audience, and the top ten highest-rated questions would be sent on to the interviewee for their response. The questions and their responses would be published in a follow-up article, with the responses debated and discussed. Occasionally, when the interviewee was a Slashdot participant like actor Wil Wheaton, they would participate in the post-interview debate as well.
I’m not sure exactly how this would be adapted for BT. Slashdot’s rating system is a bit more complicated than the one over here, and they would be more likely to have a varied and interesting pool of questions, given that they probably get about 50 times the user traffic of BT. And it would mean work for someone in starting up the process and setting up the contact.
So, what do you think? Is something like this viable? Is it workable here in the frog pond? I don’t know for sure, but it would sure be a feather in BooMan’s cap to have the people making the news over here actually interacting with us froggies, instead of hitting and running.
