Virtual Politics: A Modest Proposal
Pundits, both in print and broadcast media have predicted the demise of our political system. All acknowledge the obvious: our political system is broken. Partisan politics is more important than country. Getting even has priority over getting ahead.
Experts claim we need a tectonic shift of priorities. This shift can happen with a simple shift in geography. Congress needs to change how it does business. Congress needs to tele-commute from their home districts and states to Washington D. C. To save our political system, we need to have a virtual Congress.
Members now live in Washington. They get soaked in the power, the money and the lobbyists with the money. It stains their perspective and warps their judgement. They forget who they work for. A virtual Congress will have them live among the people they serve.
The public’s business can be conducted online, while politicians attempt to be in line with their constituents.
Committee meetings can be held online, with members participating from their offices or even a local elementary school. That will be a wonderful civics lesson.
Citizens can travel a few hours to attend these Internet committee meetings. Lobbyists can attend those committee meetings too. That would be a civics lesson of a different sort.
A virtual Congress will give members real time feedback on their decisions. Congressmen will vote online in the late morning and then will have to defend their vote at the local Rotary Club luncheon a few minutes later.
Lobbyists will hate this idea, which means it will dilute their monetary poisoning of the national agenda. This is good. In 2010, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, 12,488 lobbyists spent $2.61 billion to “influence” Congress.
Lobbyists can still meet with Congressmen in their districts, but these meetings must be posted in advance on the Internet. After the meeting, constituents and the local news media will be waiting outside with plenty of questions about what was discussed behind closed doors.
Congress can meet as a body, but only a few times a year. The meetings will be used to confront major issues and set the national agenda. They will be truly newsworthy events that will be the focus of intense coverage by the news media. Politicians will meet for a few days in Washington and then head back home, where they belong.
Politicians will claim a virtual Congress will be unworkable. Congress is a deliberative body which requires face time with colleagues to develop alliances and coalitions. Really? There are no coalitions or alliances.
That quality face time has gotten us a bitter partisan divide with a “take no hostages” attitude from both parties. Gridlock. That’s what the current system has produced. Would a tele-commuting Congress offer up worse results?
An advantage to a virtual meeting room is that the size of the room isn’t physically limited. Currently, representatives have over 780,000 constituents. This is unmanageable. With a virtual meeting hall, the House could be expanded to over 1,800 members. Each district would have about 183,000 people.
Living in their smaller districts full time would mean representatives could personally know their voters. They would no longer personally know their lobbyists.
There are no technical barriers to implementing a virtual Congress. If anything, we are drowning in media to “stay connected.” Congress will throw out security concerns, but that is a Trojan horse of the first order. Secured communications happen everyday in government.
Congress will fight this idea tooth and nail. They will fight it because it will represent a massive shift of power from Washington D. C. back to the individual states and districts. It will turn our national politics on its head.
A virtual Congress can revitalize our politics and our national conversation.
Abraham Lincoln is timeless. He said, “that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
We need a new birth of freedom.
