[Sorry this is late. Get your flu shots. Don’t be like me.]
I read that President Bush’s approval rating is less than 1 in 3. Nancy Pelosi, the incoming majority leader for the opposition party is in the same range. In other words, two-thirds of the citizens of the United States believe our leadership could improve if Bush drove his Segway into the majority leader and then over a cliff, assuming Cheney saw it happen and died of a heart attack.
Many of the Democrat candidates won this past election on the platform of “change,” without specifying what that change would be. I remember when we almost always wanted a candidate to tell us in advance if he favored tax breaks, or cannibalism, or changing the national language to humming.
Is it just me or have we set the bar too low?
I wonder who to blame for this sorry state of affairs. Is it the candidates themselves? I think not, because they only got into office because the public voted for them. Is it the voters’ fault? I think not, because as I often say in this blog, the voters don’t have the right information to make good decisions. Is it the media’s fault? Not exactly, because providing useful information (as opposed to entertainment) would make their ratings plummet and they’d go out of business. What choice do they have?
How about the big corporate interests and the lobbyists? Is it their fault? Perhaps yes, when they’re doing things illegally or without full disclosure. But their contributions are mostly disclosed, although you’d have to do some work to figure out where. And their impact would be much less if voters had the information they needed to vote in their own best interests.
What we need is a new way to help voters make decisions. If that ever happens, I’ll start voting. I don’t vote now because my vote would be uninformed and random. But I’d like to vote. It’s a good concept. I just need better tools.
In concept, it wouldn’t be that hard to provide voters with the right information, thanks to the Internet. All it would require is a website that displays both sides of every argument, point by point, within its proper context. And for every point, the opposition could register their counterpoint. So if one side said, “This will save $1 billion dollars” the opposition could tag it with their counterpoint, and the counterpoint could itself be tagged, etc. Perhaps the web site would also benefit from some sort of argument ranking system so that the best points and counterpoints floated to the top.
And I’d want to see links to research supporting any point being made. The current method of political debate involves one side making a claim and the other saying “that’s not true.” That does nothing for me. I want to click once to see the source.
I’d also want to see the list of experts lined up on both sides of every argument, along with their political affiliations. If 90% of economists favored one fiscal policy over another, that would sway me. If 90% of recently retired generals supported one method of fighting a war, that would sway me too.
I’d also like to see opinion poll results that are limited to independent voters above a certain IQ range who have passed a knowledge test on the specific issue. It doesn’t help me to know that 80% of the ignorant, brainwashed masses support something. I want to know what the well-informed, bright, independents think. That way if I don’t have the time or interest to study an issue, I can still decide to vote with the bright, informed people.
I also think we should ban all political advertising. I realize it’s an issue of free speech, but that freedom has always had lots of restrictions. For example, you can’t libel someone, and you can’t lie about your product’s effectiveness, and you can’t yell “FIRE” if there’s no fire. If a political ad sways an election and causes an unnecessary war (just to pick an example) then it’s a lot like yelling “FIRE.” We routinely limit free speech when the alternative is worse.
Lots of voters don’t use the Internet, especially the elderly. But that will change over time. And elections are often so close that it wouldn’t take much movement to improve the results.
I started out talking about whose fault it is that American politics are broken. Finding fault is how you usually determine whose job it is to shape up and fix things. But sometimes, as in this case, the people who can fix it are not the ones at fault. I think a couple of twenty-somethings with web skills could alter the face of democracy forever. And maybe make a few billion dollars for themselves along the way.