President Biden again stressed unity and civility in his Inaugural Address. Last week I wrote an op-ed, published in the Colorado Springs Gazette with some helpful, if potentially unpopular, suggestions. Here’s a link.
I think our country needs to take a deep breath now that this election is over. I don’t think the problem is really the existence of people who disagree with each other-we always have- but rather the way we disagree, and how politicians and the current media business models tend to inflame those disagreements. If we frame the problem this way, the goal would be simply to calm the seas of civic life.
President-elect Joe Biden wants to promote unity. Based on my experience in DC, both as a career federal employee, and assignments In Congress and at the White House, I’ve got a few suggestions.
First, Congress clearly needs the mother of all team-building sessions. As a veteran of many, I’d suggest AOC and Lauren Boebert be assigned to the same small group. No one will be assigned their office until they’ve worked in a small group composed of Members from both parties and have signed on to five agreed upon proposals.
Second, have you ever noticed that proposed federal regulations have public comment periods, and yet legislative proposals don’t? If they did, everyone would be able to weigh in, not just interest groups of various kinds.
Each interest group wants something that’s best for them, not necessarily for the public. They could start with the list of all the proposals developed in the above team- building.
Third would be no Twitter accounts for elected officials. If the past four years have shown us anything, it’s that Tweeting instead of press releases is anathema to thoughtful public discourse. I actually went on Senator Cory Gardner’s once and felt like I needed a cleansing ritual afterwards. People were simply nasty. Why intentionally provide a safe space for hate? I’d make a rule that like career feds, elected officials can’t have their own Twitter accounts.
Fourth would be no money seeking for elected officials. I volunteered to work on now-Governor Jared Polis’ campaign via the website, but I never heard back except with emails asking for donations. Perhaps because I was on that list, I also received emails from an account in his name after he was elected, asking for more donations. Not a good look for public officials, in my opinion.
When people take their oaths of office, I think they should also suspend all donation seeking or other activities related to campaigning or future campaigns. They would only be able to campaign for themselves and only starting, say, four months before the election. That way we would know for sure they were working on what we were paying them to work on (governing, not stumping).
Fifth, we need a bipartisan Internal Peace Commission led by retired legislators and others with input from academic and practicing conflict resolution folks. We’re always talking about “using the best science” in policy. What policy could be more important than making our mutual public life better? Good policies flow from good people, quality and open discussions, and working in good faith.
It’s a simple idea. We know what’s broken. Let’s take a deep breath, reset our mistrust and hate levels to zero and get at it.
Other suggestions?
I once read that assembling Ikea furniture can be a great teambuilding exercise for couples. Maybe we need to lock Congress in a room with opposite party pairs assembling Ikea furniture until they learn to work together. =)
Who knew that IKEA owns timberland in the US?
I’ll see you and raise you : I believe much would be solved if there was NO ZERO NADA NIL fund-raising by elected federal office holders. Have publicly funded races with upper limits (eg $400 mill for Prez) which they can spend however they please with complete transparency. And then there’s the issue of GA senate runoff and the avalanche of money that landed there. Very distressing. We also need to address Prez race being decided by a handful of states (ie MN, WI, PA, FL), while ignoring the rest (ie CA, NY, AL, MS). Popular vote??
I’m not sure why you said career feds can’t have Twitter accounts – no such law or regulation exists. We’re free to express our own opinions off government time or equipment.
Hear, hear!
Whoops, yes my mistake. Thanks! I was talking about “official Twitter” accounts, didn’t make that clear. But as I look into it more perhaps t isn’t really clear in real life either. I was thinking of the Twitter Accounts of Governor so and so or Senator so and so. But I note that AOC and LB both don’t use the Congressperson, they might be TV personalities for all we know. And have as much meaningful content. Not adding anything to public discourse, but trying to inflame base. But I agree that would run into first amendment vs. ownership of Twitter issues which are way above my unpaid grade.
At the same time, I also think it’s a bit more complicated. In terms of this very blog, I was clearly told that they couldn’t tell me not to do it on my own time, but I was also later told that one of my employees was not getting a job because (someone in the WO?) thought that she was responsible for this very blog so she had bad job mojo. At least in the Obama Admin, there could be repercussions (and not very good staffwork).
But maybe that was in the early days of these things and both employees and other people have figured things out more. I was told in a particularly Dilbertian moment by folks in the WO that I was in trouble for not following the blogging policy that hadn’t been established yet.