Now What?

The most interesting times in American politics are the transitions. Between Election Day and the seating of a new Congress, things sometimes get shaken up. The rising party usually has some changes it actually wants to make, and some promises it actually wants to keep to its base. And the declining party often also makes changes; leadership gets re-arranged and there’s usually a desire to show the voters that “we heard you, too.”
Consider that in 2006, the mid-term election that swept the Republicans out of power in the House, the newly empowered House Democrats actually instituted some improvements in ethics rules and took steps–sometimes with the support of House Republicans–to open up that chamber to the new world of social media. The Open House Project*, which was chaired by two Democratic reform activists and two Republican reform activists, was welcomed by both incoming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and newly elevated Minority Leader John Boehner, and many of its recommendations–like allowing Members of Congress to use third-party platforms like YouTube or Facebook, and improving committee web sites–were enacted. [*Andrew Rasiej and I are advisers to the Sunlight Foundation, which incubated the Open House Project.] And in 2008, the critical choices that would define Barack Obama’s first two years were also made during the transition between Election Day and his actual inauguration. It was then that Obama locked in his approach to the Wall Street meltdown (anointing Larry Summers and Timothy Geithner, a strategy that I personally viewed as enabling the enablers); decided that he would make health care reform his top domestic priority; gave his chief of staff the power to cut secret deals with special interests while announcing pledges to make his administration more transparent and accountable; and abandoned the grass-roots, bottom-up movement-style organization that had powered his candidacy, replacing it instead with a pallid and placid copy known as “Organizing for America.”
So what happens now? I have a few observations and suggestions for both sides of the aisle.
First, actually change how Washington works. President Obama alluded to this need in his post-election press conference earlier today, when he admitted “We were in such a hurry to get things done that we didn’t change how we got things done.” He then went on to offer a little soliloquy about how it must look to average Americans to still see Congress pass bills stuffed with earmarks–remarks that I found ironic as Obama himself had not uttered a word dealing with earmarks since his State of the Union message last winter, when he called for the creation of a searchable database of all earmarks. Enacting real transparency for how Washington works remains an orphan issue inside the Beltway (apart from the work of groups like Sunlight, on which I obviously don’t have an objective view); politicians coo at the baby but no one really wants to adopt it.
That of course could change, and frankly it would be great for the country to see another jump-ball competition between the parties over who actually is going to make 21st century transparency happen. Why? Because transparency breeds trust; secrecy breeds suspicion. And neither party should be sanguine about the tidal forces sweeping the country; indeed, neither party is even favored positively by the voters. Both have a ten-point negative balance in the national exit poll crosstabs: 53% of voters view the Democratic party unfavorably, vs 43% who view it favorably. 52% view the Republican party unfavorably, vs 42% who view it favorably.
So far, the new rising Republican leadership has been first out of the box to articulate how it is going to change Washington. Saying “we will drain the swamp rather than learning to swim with the alligators,” Rep. Eric Cantor announced his bid to become Majority Leader earlier today. His 22-page outline includes plans to continue the voter-generated YouCut project, which involves the public in prioritizing spending cuts; a promise to stop earmarking; and a hat-tip towards the 72-hour rule (requiring the text of bills to be online for 3 days prior to a vote). These are all reasonable steps; can we have some more? (It remains to be seen how the Democratic leadership is going to respond to this agenda; also, it’s not clear whether either party will choose to respond to the public revulsion at how big money is coursing even more thru our politics, in the wake of the Citizens United decision of the Supreme Court.)
Second, show that you’re actually listening. From the White House to Capitol Hill, everyone has made a big show of how they’re using social media. The President gives his radio address on YouTube; the White House streams events live on Facebook; and just about every Member of Congress is tweeting. But with a few exceptions, there’s just a lot of talking going on, and not much listening. President Obama clearly laments living in the White House bubble and, judging from his press conference today, thinks that part of his problem is that, as a result, the public thinks he’s out of touch.
“Those letters that I read every night, some of them just break my heart. Some of them provide me encouragement and inspiration. But nobody is filming me reading those letters. And so it’s hard, I think, for people to get a sense of, well, how is he taking in all this information?”
Well, unless some under-secretary of the whatever is using the WhiteHouse.gov/live stream at the same time, there’s nothing preventing Obama from starting up a digital fireside chat and reading some of those letters live onto the web (personal details redacted), and showing the public that he is actually listening. Nothing, except a failure of imagination, an overabundance of control, and a good degree of technocratic elitism.
The same goes for both parties in Congress. You claim to hear the people, but then why don’t you show us who you are meeting with every day? How many lobbyists? Which ones? How many regular people? A handful of Members of Congress now make their daily schedules public (after the fact) and thus if you want to see how and with whom your representative is spending their time, you have a relatively wide open window in those cases. For the rest, the back room IS their office.
Will anything actually change as a result of this election? I am now at the age where I no longer believe any politician’s promises. And while changing how Washington works, making it far more transparent and participatory, would obviously be popular with the public, politicians on both sides of the aisle have millions, nay billions, of reasons why they’d rather be cautious, or used tried-and-true methods of fooling the voters and blaming the other side for the mess we’re in. So I’m not holding my breath.
But there’s a wild card in the game–what you and I and millions of other connected political activists do next. That move is harder to predict; we keep doing surprising things…