After orchestrating the Tea Party protests against health care in August 2009, it appears that Republican lawmakers are no longer willing to face the public.
With memories of those angry protests still vivid, it seems that one of the unintended consequences of a movement that thrived on such open, often confrontational interactions with lawmakers is that there are fewer members of Congress now willing to face their constituents.
They basically killed the traditional town hall meeting by trolling them.
Politicians of all stripes no longer meet the public in any framework but one of marketing and spin. And there is no evidence that politicians actually get detailed information from the public who cannot write enough zeros on their contribution checks.
Letters to Congress are stereotyped and receive form letter responses laughably off target from the original letter. Phone calls to Congress are sufficient only for an intern to check a Yes/No box on a pre-identified issue sheet. Congressional web pages force identification of pre-set topics that mindlessly and automatically generate non-relevant form letters in reply.
Congress has built itself a bubble that insulates it from the people, and the public knows that Congress is totally out of touch with them.
Ideology or party, they are all out of touch to actual conversations with ordinary people.
Which produces a reaction in the public of shouting louder and spamming the existing communication channels.
Politicians are over-controlled by their staffs, fearful of fatal PR gaffes. (That right there tells you something about the “crazies”.)
Political process is dead in the United States of America. Jimmy Carter has it right. The US no longer is a functioning democracy. Money has killed it.
Which would help more, reining in the influence of money on politics or guaranteeing the right to vote?
Definitely reining in the money. The number of eligible voters denied the vote is in single percentage digits, while the percentage of voters denied a real voice to their “representative” is in the high nineties.
For my member of Congress, reining in the power of money. He functions essentially in the interests of his employer, a large university that runs a huge health care system and panders to the military that was added to his district in the last gerrymander.
Guaranteeing the right to vote is not a trivial issue in North Carolina and elsewhere.
Both are necessary for a functioning democracy. But even both together are not sufficient if there isn’t an effectively democratic means of political communications.
We are almost to the point of arguing over which crumb of democracy to protect.
The power of money and ‘a democratic means of political communication’ strike me as pretty much the same issue, no?
I guess the good news is that an increasing number of Americans get news online?
They are in fact different issues. The overscripted, cautious, insulated, marketing approach is actually a result of media interest more in gaffes than in policy. Totally controlled communications means no gafffes is the assumption and nothing that opponents can twist into nonsense.
That is independent of the money issue. Although the need to buy lots of media to market ones message is the proximate excuse for the money issue.
But what causes a media more interested in gaffes than policy? One thing, I’d argue, is the corporate (ie, money) culture.
Sorry for boasting, but Jerry Nadler’s intern sends the correct form letter practically every time.
Back in the pre-Reagan dark ages I used to get letters written by aides that precisely addressed the point I was raising with minimal spin and were not form letters at all. Although the fomula parts of the letter “Thank you…” etc. were likely stored in a mag card word processor.
Boo:
Does your Congresscritter even do public townhalls? Or just over cheesy conference call? And hasn’t he been doing the conference call thingy even before the ObamaCare bullcrap?
Mine has town hall meetings on afternoons, Mon-Fri, hence working people can’t attend, only students, the retired, and businessmen (the paydirt!).
This was already true in 2010 for my congressman, the long-sitting Bill Young (R-FL).
In 2010 during the height of the tea party disruption, Young sent a mailer to constituents asking for their “town hall” questions. Return postage paid by the constituent. He would later cull them and answer a few on his web site.
I called up his office to complain about the lack of a real town hall, and staff told me that they were concerned about town hall disruptions and the mailer approach was just as good.
Coward. At this was when tea party madness was directed at Democrats, not Republicans like Young.
His district is actually a politically balanced district. He wouldn’t want to be the target of a real grass movement public protest. Nothing really new here though. He is the most personally invisible congressional representative I’ve ever had. But the “town hall mailer” was an insult.
What keeps him in office is supported rendered by the zillions of dollars he’s brought home over the decades, and the promise of more money.
The flipside is that a lot of people are stupid, loud and dangerous. Lack of town halls really isn’t the problem, they’re a relic. Money in politics is the real problem.
Here’s what’s up today in my neighborhood.
Barry Goldwater tells me:
The extremist’s infest the TeaP.
Of course Republicans – the charter (though far from only) members of the Bedwetters Party – are terrified of town halls and unscripted moments. Hell, a lot of them are still terrified of their mothers, and their hatred of “tyrannical” government reads a lot like a teenage boy not being allowed to do what he wants. Behind their bravado, they fear what they are not, which pretty much include the entire adult population.
Actually, the analogy should go farther. It’s like the 16-year-old kid who throws a tantrum over not being allowed to borrow the family car, which he’s already crashed three times…