No democracy in this here United States: "vigorous debate is supposedly one of the most important underpinnings of a functioning democracy, and in George W. Bush's Washington, we keep seeing again and again that it doesn't exist.
President Bush routinely ducks both his political opponents and the media, and when he does bow to convention, it's within parameters far more controlled than any president of modern times. At his recent press conference, reporters were not permitted to ask follow-up questions, a proscription that enabled him to get away with the usual first-pass evasion that most politicians make while never being confronted with the second, more specific question ('But sir, with all due respect...').
'Recently, he spoke to the American Society of Newspaper Editors, and, unlike every president in recent times before him, did not take unrehearsed questions from his Fourth Estate audience, submitting only to pre-selected, written questions.
'The absence of democratic exchange is not limited to the administration. On Capitol Hill, the lack of actual dialogue is, if anything, worse. Think about this paradox: Congress is the ground zero of our democracy, right? Yet today, there is precious little democracy on Capitol Hill. Democrats are excluded from meetings. Bills are rewritten at the last minute in the meetings from which Democrats are excluded.
'An allegation arises in Bob Woodward's book that the administration perhaps illegally moved $700 million toward Iraq War planning without telling Congress. Republican congressional leaders are asked about it; they cannot refute it, instead dancing around the question and trying to change the subject. And even this issue -- quite similar to the Reagan administration's bypassing of the Boland Amendment, which resulted in a serious probe and a presidential crisis -- fades to black.' "
- posted by geoff @ #