I seldom enough agree with either of them, I’m not sure that I’ve ever agreed with both of them at the same time on any question beyond “Which way is up?”
However, Newt Gingrich’s “Winning the Future” e-mail today contained the following section:
A Good Idea From Sen. Obama That Should be Implemented Now
When he visited the headquarters of Internet search engine giant Google, Inc. last week, Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.) had a good idea that Congress and the President should support.
Sen. Obama said that as President he would encourage more public interaction with government by putting government documents and legislation online for all Americans to see. He also said he would appoint the nation’s first technology chief and encourage public participation through Internet forums.
These are good ideas that the President should make his own. He could accomplish some of them by changing government regulations. The rest he should challenge Congress to pass in his State of the Union address next year.
This nation is, of course, a republic rather than a pure democracy, and I don’t want to change that. Several of the left-oriented third parties, though, do push for more interactive and participatory democracy … and they have a point.
There is a lot of talk about what is and isn’t in “comprehensive immigration reform,” who is responsible for which earmarks in which bills, and exactly what the Law of the Sea Treaty says, to take a few recent examples.
If we could simply go to a web site and easily read all of the text of any act (as easily as anyone can ever read legalese, that is), we could speak from a much more-informed position. Instead of arguing about what documents really say, besides what we should and should not do, this would allow us to see for ourselves, and then simply move on to the underlying principles.
I think that there should be an easily-accessed database of every piece of legislation being considered, and every vote on every issue. Transcripts of the day’s business and hearings … it should all be there for us to see. It is, after all, on the public record.
Transparency would be a good thing. I’d love to see more openness in our government.
If Newt Gingrich and Barack Obama (and I) are all in agreement, then this is an idea that could really win some attention and make some real progress.
