Somebody--perhaps the same reader as before--has written to suggest that Americans' trust in their government will be a reality only when there is evidence of dialog between Capitol Hill's elected Democrats and Republicans. Presumably, the reader's intention is to suggest that such a dialog actually produces results.
Okay, it's worth a try.
But that brings us to this question: How would those results be measured? Or, maybe the question is this: What is the measurement that would convincingly and objectively show that results have happened?
If, as the reader/writer states, it is true that Republicans and Democrats--my assumption is that this is intended to mean elected Republicans and Democrats--"seem to be incapable" of having an "open and honest" dialog, then you might think that different people who can have an open and honest dialog would be elected.
However, the voting public--at least some of whom must be among those Americans who say they don't trust their government--tends to vote for the same Congressional and Senatorial candidates year after year, if the high incidence of reelection is any measure.
Why is that?
Maybe it's at least partly caused, as some poet once said, by the fact that hope springs eternal in the human breast. (My apologies for mangling the original verse.) Possibly it's also because the devil you know is better than the devil you don't know. Another way of looking at it is that voters simply are not convinced--in a global sense--that there is any better choice.
Dialog is good. Dialog that produces results is better. Dialog that produces beneficial results is the best.
How do we motivate our elected representatives to proceed along that path, and how do we measure the progress in a trustworthy way?
All of this is worthy of time and effort. Maybe we can come up with some good answers to these questions.
No comments:
Post a Comment