President Obama has labored to unite different political factions with policy compromises and conciliatory speeches. But it was Obama's incisive grappling at the Republican retreat last week that really lit a bipartisan fire, drawing politicos and commentators of all stripes to call for more questions sessions for the President and the opposition party.
Ari MelberPresident Obama has labored to unite different political factions with policy compromises and conciliatory speeches. But it was Obama’s incisive grappling at the Republican retreat last week that really lit a bipartisan fire, drawing politicos and commentators of all stripes to call for more questions sessions for the President and the opposition party.
In "Left-Right Want ‘Obama’ Question Time," Politico‘s Mike Allen reports on what may be the first effort uniting conservative tax warrior Grover Norquist and our own Katrina venden Heuvel:
A politically diverse group of bloggers, commentators, techies and politicos on Wednesday will launch an online campaign, Demand Question Time, urging President Barack Obama and GOP congressional leaders to hold regular, televised conversations like the extraordinary exchange in Baltimore on Friday. Supporters include Grover Norquist, Joe Trippi, Mark McKinnon, Ed Morrissey, Ari Melber, Katrina vanden Heuvel … Eli Pariser … Mark McKinnon, Markos Moulitsas and Ed Morrissey. The steering committee is made up of Micah Sifry, David Corn, Mike Moffo, Mindy Finn, Jon Henke and Glenn Reynolds.
Demand Question Time invites visitors to sign a petition: "We live in a world that increasingly demands more dialogue than monologue. President Obama’s January 29th question-and-answer session with Republican leaders gave the public a remarkable window into the state of our union and governing process. It was riveting and educational. The exchanges were substantive, civil and candid. And in a rare break from our modern politics, sharp differences between elected leaders were on full public display without rancor or ridicule. … "So we call on President Barack Obama and House Minority Leader John Boehner to hold these sessions regularly – and allow them to be broadcast and webcast live and without commercial interruption, sponsorship or intermediaries."
On Wednesday, the effort was the top headline at Huffington Post, linking to an article detailing the effort by co-founder David Corn, a Mother Jones writer and former Washington editor of The Nation.
But White House adviser David Axelrod already gave the concept a light brushback earlier this week, Allen reports:
POLITICO asked White House senior adviser David Axelrod about the possibility of regular question time on Monday, before the online campaign was announced, and he said the president’s aides were more likely to look for one-shot opportunities for Obama to engage with Republicans. "The thing that made Friday interesting . was the spontaneity," Axelrod said. "If you slip into a kind of convention, then conventionality will overtake the freshness of that."
The campaign is circulating an online petition, and hosting, naturally, a Twitter feed for progress reports.
Ari MelberTwitterAri Melber is The Nation's Net movement correspondent, covering politics, law, public policy and new media, and a regular contributor to the magazine's blog. He received a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science from the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor and a J.D. from Cornell Law School, where he was an editor of the Cornell Journal of Law and Public Policy. Contact Ari: on Facebook, on Twitter, and at amelber@hotmail.com. Melber is also an attorney, a columnist for Politico and a contributing editor at techPresident, a nonpartisan website covering technology’s impact on democracy. During the 2008 general election, he traveled with the Obama Campaign on special assignment for The Washington Independent. He previously served as a Legislative Aide in the US Senate and as a national staff member of the 2004 John Kerry Presidential Campaign. As a commentator on public affairs, Melber frequently speaks on national television and radio, including including appearances on NBC, CNBC, CNN, CNN Headline News, C-SPAN, MSNBC, Bloomberg News, FOX News, and NPR, on programs such as “The Today Show,” “American Morning,” “Washington Journal,” “Power Lunch,” "The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell," "The Joy Behar Show," “The Dylan Ratigan Show,” and “The Daily Rundown,” among others. Melber has also been a featured speaker at Harvard, Oxford, Yale, Columbia, NYU, The Center for American Progress and many other institutions. He has contributed chapters or essays to the books “America Now,” (St. Martins, 2009), “At Issue: Affirmative Action,” (Cengage, 2009), and “MoveOn’s 50 Ways to Love Your Country,” (Inner Ocean Publishing, 2004). His reporting has been cited by a wide range of news organizations, academic journals and nonfiction books, including the The Washington Post, The New York Times, ABC News, NBC News, CNN, FOX News, National Review Online, The New England Journal of Medicine and Boston University Law Review. He is a member of the American Constitution Society, he serves on the advisory board of the Roosevelt Institute and lives in Manhattan.