The Health Care Summit Was Fine. Question Time Would Be Better.

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


The health care summit hosted by President Barack Obama on Thursday predictably did not yield any bipartisan breakthrough. But as I explained in my PoliticsDaily.com column, it was quite valuable:

It clarified the situation. Though much of the conversation consisted of participants pushing pre-existing talking points, the debate made the obvious really obvious: Obama and his Republican foes are miles apart in ideological and policy terms. As the hours went by, Obama engaged in wonky exchanges with the Rs—sometime calling them out on key factual disputes, such as whether the Congressional Budget Office said his overhaul would lead to higher premiums. (Obama got the better of that argument.) But all this back and forth kept illustrating the basic divide. The Republicans do not believe it is Washington’s mission to take major action to challenge the insurance industry and extend coverage to most of the nation’s citizens without health insurance. Instead, they want to move, as they repeatedly said, “step by step.” But the Democrats believe that the only way to cure the health system of its ills is to adopt comprehensive change.

This gabfest highlighted the irreconcilable differences. The Rs don’t think the Ds and government can handle such a big and expensive job. The Ds don’t think the Rs and the insurance industry can remedy the problems with small measures. And the meaning of all this unavoidable: if the president and the congressional Democrats want to pass any version of comprehensive health care reform, they will have to do it by themselves, using whatever legitimate legislative procedures are available. The summit clarified the situation.

The health care summit also showed the value of direct engagement between the president and the opposition—and the need for establishing the practice of Question Time. After Obama and House GOPers last month held a gripping Q&A at a Republican retreat, a cross-partisan group of bloggers, techies, and political consultants (myself included) initiated the Demand Question Time campaign, calling on Obama and the Republicans to hold such public and televised sessions on a regular basis. Neither the White House nor the House Republican leaders have yet signed on. But the health care summit has been cited by political observers as a sequel to that earlier face-off.

The summit, though it indeed supports the case for Question Time, was a bit different than what institutionalized Question Time might look like. The health care meeting was long, clocking in at seven hours. And the need to move ploddingly through a long list of Republican and Democratic speakers—many of whom were there to present talking points and help their respective party position itself for the health care endgame—made the event seem stilted at times. There were some rather significant policy-related exchanges. Yet this single-issue event lacked the dynamism of the shorter and less formal session at the Republican retreat. And because of its length, the summit will likely not be watched in its entirety by as many people as the earlier Q&A. (MSNBC cut away in the afternoon to show an Olympics hockey game, and Fox News and CNN often interrupted the proceedings to air the analysis of their commentators.)

This summit happened because the president, believing it would be of political use, called for the meeting. The Republicans obviously figured it would be politically beneficial to accept his invitation (or to not reject the invitation.) But Question Time should not depend on a president’s political calculation. It should occur on a regular basis. How often? Once a month? Every other month? The exact frequency is not the most important matter. (On Friday morning, I appeared on CNN with Grover Norquist, one of the many conservative proponents of Question Time, and he enthusiastically suggested weekly sessions. That might be too much of a good thing for everyone—including the public.) Regular Question Time should be not too long, perhaps 90 minutes or so. It generally would cover a range of topics, unless the questioners decide to drill down in one area. It should include follow-up questions and plenty of back-and-forth.

The Demand Question Time effort has been picking up prominent endorsers on the left and right. There’s a petition to sign. It has its own online discussion.

The health care summit demonstrated that the national debate is enhanced when the president and his opponents discuss face to face—in full public view—the big and contentious issues of the day. Rep. Kendrick Meek, a Florida Democrat running for Senate, used the occasion to endorse the Question Time campaign. I believe he’s the first congressional official to do so. In a guest editorial for Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight.com, Meek wrote,

Too often, we think of politics in a top-down, hierarchical sense instead of treating it as a two-way street. Holding regular, publicly-televised and webcasted conversations between the President and the people’s representatives has the potential to combat hyper-partisanship and political stagnation….

Even the White House has dismissed the idea of instituting Question Time, claiming it is “going to be hard to recreate the spontaneity that happened.” However, is “spontaneity” really the end goal? Or is it something much greater, a deepening of our democracy and renewal of our basic governing process?

Politicians today are heavily scripted and risk-adverse. Too many are unwilling to reach across the aisle and forge a bipartisan consensus for the good of the country. Question Time would have a healthy effect on me as an elected leader by providing a regular opportunity to hear views that differ from my own.

I understand that Question Time is no panacea to our country’s challenges. There is no magic wand that will suddenly break our political impasse. I do think, however, that it’s worth a shot.

With that first Q&A in Baltimore and with this week’s summit, the president and the Republicans have moved in the direction of Question Time. And on each occasion, they have demonstrated why they should go all the way.

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate