In a great follow on to President Obama’s engagement with the House GOP, a coalition of writers who span the political spectrum are calling for Question Time with the President to become an American institution. Politico reports:
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.
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.
The initial White House response is to pour cold water on the idea, making the same argument I did a couple of days ago:
“The thing that made Friday interesting was the spontaneity,” Axelrod said. “If you slip into a kind of convention, then conventionality will overtake the freshness of that.”
True enough, but just like presidential debates or Sunday morning talk shows, these things have lasting value, even if the romance wears off. Anticipating this point, Demand Question Time writes:
“None of us are naive and believe that implementing question time will cure what ails our country and our political process. We do realize that if QT does become a Washington routine, politicians and their aides will do what they can to game it to their advantage. But even though there are problems with the presidential debates — which have been taken over by the political parties and a corporate-sponsored commission — those events still have value. If you want more question time — even if only for its entertainment value — you can saddle up with dozens (and maybe it will turn into hundreds, thousands and millions) of your fellow Americans in calling on our elected representatives to show us their best stuff on a regular basis.”
Hear, hear. Naturally, any president would be reluctant to take on this kind of responsibility, since it means exposing oneself to hostile fire. But I could see this president deciding that he’s eager for precisely this kind of showdown.