United Liberty

Today’s Politico notes the birth of a bipartisan movement:

A politically diverse group of bloggers, commentators, techies and politicos on Wednesday will launch an online campaign, Demand Question Time, urging President Barack Obama and GOP congressional leaders to hold regular, televised conversations like the extraordinary exchange in Baltimore on Friday. Supporters include Grover Norquist, Joe Trippi, Mark McKinnon, Ed Morrissey, Ari Melber, Katrina vanden Heuvel and David Corn.

Original endorsers include Grover Norquist and Eli Pariser, Joe Trippi and Mark McKinnon, Markos Moulitsas and Ed Morrissey, and many more, including Ari Melber, Katrina vanden Heuvel, Ana Marie Cox and Nate Silver. The steering committee is made up of Micah Sifry, David Corn, Mike Moffo, Mindy Finn, Jon Henke and Glenn Reynolds.

(…)

Demand Question Time invites visitors to sign a petition: “We live in a world that increasingly demands more dialogue than monologue. President Obama’s January 29th question-and-answer session with Republican leaders gave the public a remarkable window into the state of our union and governing process. It was riveting and educational. The exchanges were substantive, civil and candid. And in a rare break from our modern politics, sharp differences between elected leaders were on full public display without rancor or ridicule. …

“So we call on President Barack Obama and House Minority Leader John Boehner to hold these sessions regularly – and allow them to be broadcast and webcast live and without commercial interruption, sponsorship or intermediaries. We also urge the President and the Republican Senate caucus to follow suit. And we ask the President and the House and Senate caucuses of his own party to consider mounting similar direct question-and-answer sessions. We will ask future Presidents and Congresses to do the same. It is time to make Question Time a regular feature of our democracy.”

On it’s face, it sounds like a good idea — get the President and the opposing party in a room together, let them battle it out, and put on television.

As Tim Cavanaugh notes over at Hit & Run, though, it really doesn’t work in our system of government and there’s no reason to think it would really change anything:

Demand Question Timers, I am with you in spirit, but not in reality. Question Time, or more precisely, “Prime Minister’s Questions,” is a habit of a parliamentary system based on majoritarian consensus, in which the head of state is a monarch. The U.S. government is a republic built on divided branches, in which the head of state is a temporary official. There’s nothing wrong with conflating the two in an informal way, but why should anybody believe this will improve Washington, D.C.’s cycle of making and enforcing laws? While it’s true that the exchange was “substantive, civil and candid,” government is not about candor, civility or substance. No minds were changed in this debate, nor should they have been, because the president and the Congress are, by order of the Constitution, natural opponents.

Nobody came away from the q&a with any new information or insight into the Health Care Reform debate, or the stimulus, or any other topic other than the loveliness of Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan’s family. That all these talented and persuasive people did a vigorous job of defending their positions is not surprising, but were we somehow lacking in vigorous defenses of their positions before?

Moreover, as Cavanaugh notes, the Constitution already provides an avenue for direct exchange between the President and Congress:

It takes place once a year and is called the State of the Union address. There’s nothing in the Constitution stating that the president can’t field questions during the State of the Union address, and if somebody puts that in a petition, I’ll sign. (It would be an improvement on the current format, in which the Leader is encouraged to pontificate at Syrian length, with the rest of us left only to gauge the volume of the applause.) Meanwhile, Question Time for the president makes no more sense than Question Time for the queen.

Agreed.

While I like the sentiment of the Demand Question Time people, I don’t think that it makes sense to try to graft a tradition designed for an entirely different political system onto ours.