The town hall meetings thing

Michele says that she's going to hold a town hall meeting, some day.

I mean, you know, she's hinting that she's going to hold a *real* town hall meeting, where she shows up live and takes unscreened questions from unscreened consitutents.

That's news (if it's true; you never know with Michele.) It's news because she hasn't done anything like a real town hall meeting in years. Her most famous live town hall meeting in her district (nicknamed "Bathroomgate") was a public relations disaster for Michele. She ended it early when she started to get critical questions from constituents and called the police in to investigate participants.

And ever since then, she's been extremely reluctant to appear before any constituents who might have questions about her judgment, priorities, and performance for her district since taking office. Sure, Minnesota has reported some Bachmann events as "town hall meetings"--but they weren't. (No live answers to live questions to Bachmann, at those events. Plenty of events where Bachmann says she will not be taking any questions. Instead of questions and answers for Bachmann, we get Bachmann or her guests "spouting and speech making"--a one way, non-dialogue between the representative and her constituents.)

And Bachmann promotes her pre-screened question telephone sessions as town hall meetings--but they aren't. Bachmann staffers screen the incoming calls so they can decide which questions can be asked.

Here's a possible solution: conduct the "town hall meetings" via the internet, with *all* questions (and comments) to the politician involved appearing on the screen--as they are asked, in real time.

Yes, even the comments of people who want to heckle the politician should be posted. The people who would read the session--like most of the people who attend live town hall sessions--will be able to distinguish serious questions from heckling designed to disrupt the session.

That's very important, that last part. A small group of hecklers can stop a live town hall cold--and it turns out that political players on the right are actually trying to do exactly that, all over the country--organizing small mobs of hecklers to go into town hall meetings and stop them via disruption. (The Nazis used to do the same thing to electoral opponents, in the days before the Reich. The point is to stop the discussion, drown out the opposition so they won't be heard, and discourage citizens from coming to future political events. That's one method to use, if your dream is to end democracy.)

You think I'm kidding about the "sponsored heckling mob" stuff? Here's an excerpt from an article by New York Daily News columnist Errol Lewis:

Political thuggery is always sickening. What makes the current round especially abhorrent is the fact that some of the mob behavior appears to be the work of corporate lobbying groups that are spending an estimated $1.4 million a day to block (health care) reform.

One such group, FreedomWorks, is chaired by former Republican House Majority Leader Dick Armey and has a corporate board that includes billionaire Steve Forbes, who was a GOP candidate for President.

Bob MacGuffie, a Connecticut-based activist with FreedomWorks, wrote a memo detailing the best ways to disrupt health care town hall meetings.

"Artificially Inflate Your Numbers: Spread out in the hall and try to be in the front half," the memo reads. Other pointers include: "Be Disruptive Early And Often." "Try To Rattle Him, Not Have An Intelligent Debate . . . stand up and shout out and sit right back down. Look for these opportunities before he even takes questions."

Tactics like that also work to stop *the people in the audience* from asking questions and getting answers. So it is easy to predict a similar "astroturf mob" showing up at some future live question and answer session by Bachmann--"supporting her" by drowning out other citizens and heckling other citizens who want to ask questions. If that's captured live on camera for YouTube--these hecklers and their sponsors feel no shame, that's a record of their success in stopping the political dialogue and turning it into a shouting match. And if the police are called in when a confrontation between citizens and hecklers "gets out of hand"--that's an excuse for Bachmann not to hold any more live town hall meetings, and that's her ideal as an unaccountable elected official.

The "live on-line town hall" format is a possible solution. It would enable all constituents to be heard because there could be no "shouting down or drowning out." The politicians could answer the questions they want to answer, and simply ignore those they don't want to answer. (That last part will appeal to Bachmann.) A session would be limited to a pre-announced time period: the politician would agree to answer live on line for say, two hours. The politician signs his or her name to every answer they give, so that it becomes their answer of record.

One question or comment allowed per participant, per session. The length of a question limited to say--two hundred words, enough to raise an issue or news development and attach a question at the end.

All questions and comments to be directed to the politician. No answers or responses are required to heckling--but keep the heckling up as part of the record of the session. People need to see what elected officials have to deal with, these days.

All people wishing to ask questions or make comments have to sign in and supply their verifiable name and address, so that constituents get first priority with their elected official. One question per constiuent, per session. All questions submitted during the two hour time period, whether answered or unanswered, appear in the record of the thread. Keep the record of the session up on line (the questions asked and answered and ignored-and the politician's answers) up on line, so constituents and other interested parties can review the answers and non-answers.

I know that there are problems with this format, too. For example, Bachmann supporters could write friendly "astroturf" questions in advance of the on line session and wall paper the session with them. But at least then we'd have tangible and permanent evidence that *that* is how Bachmann conducts "a town hall meeting."

And--astroturf or not--all questions would appear, even if Bachmann wouldn't answer them. Deleting unfriendly questions from an on-line live town hall would raise serious freedom of speech concerns and perhaps appropriate legal action directed at politicians and staff members who delete constituent questions. Participants would know if their submitted questions were being deleted (not just ignored.)

An American politician's policy of avoiding or suppressing tough questions is disgraceful and yes: un-American. Politicians and citizens are not supposed to simply sit and there and take this. If cranks and big money interests organize like stormtroopers or KKK members--to stop the long and honorable tradition of live questions and answers at town hall meetings--the rest of us aren't supposed to cave in to that. Abandoning the hundreds-of-years-old democratic tradition of town hall meetings to political thuggery, is not an option.