Proof of the Pudding

If I understand the noon news today, the President is going to meet with a "select committee" of Republicans to discuss the financial issues at hand, but I have no idea how those select few are chosen and what the conversation is going to be. If, on the other hand, the President were to talk to the entire Congress at the same time and in the same place, perhaps we'd have an actual give and take of ideas, agreement on key issues and disagreements on other key issues.

I like the idea of the President striding into Congress to speak his piece and answer his questioners face-to-face, like a Town Hall meeting or a campaign debate. No selecting out nay-sayers and/or loading the deck with yes-sayers, nor the common approach of sending a message via a political sycophant. At least we'd have a better chance of actually knowing the 3 main positions in our economic issue: the President's, the Democrats', and the Republicans' stances. Let's hear for ourselves who agrees and why, as well as who disagrees and why. No third party translation of what anyone thinks anyone else believes or supports or disagrees with: we hear it from their very lips.

The President has said that he's talked to "the Republican and/or Democratic leadership," but he's never talked to "the Republicans and/or the Democrats." He talks to his inner circle, who then talk to the upper eschelons, who then filter the discussion and send it out to the minions. The classic game of telephone tells us as early as kindergarten that an endless chain of interpretation changes the original message, often to the point that the original message is no longer recognizable.