Last week, President Barack Obama visited the House Republican Conference in Baltimore, Maryland to answer questions. It was an excellent meeting, with mostly thoughtful questions from the representatives, and even more thoughtful answers by the President. It was without soundbites, without too much political preening, and thoroughly refreshing. You can view the remarks at CSPAN.
This is something that shouldn't be rare in a supposedly democratic society. Unfortunately this is not a regular part of Washington life, but hopefully this can change. If you are believer in real change, and a believer in better government, or just a fan of the UK Prime Ministers Question Time, please visit the Demand Question Time website.
As Nate Silver explains in this post about the subject, there are an awful lot of questions about how this would work. I agree that it would need to be random, if only to prevent what happened at Obama's meeting with the Senate Democrats this week. In that meeting, all of the questioners were Senators who just happened to be facing reelection this November. Thus, the questions weren't quite as frank as one would hope, and were far too concerned with politics instead of governance.
Will this become a part of our national calendar? I can't tell. Obviously a lot of powerful people on both sides of the aisle would stand to lose out in this scenario. However, the people that should truly matter, all 300 million plus and counting, would win out big. I figure if it can happen, this would be the President to do it.
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