Transparently ludicrous

Politics and media are something which I talk about a fair amount on here (often, admittedly at far too great a length and backed up by little or no knowledge or research), but politics affects us all, and media is a vital important tool in modern politics, so excuse me for a moment if I ramble on about it for a while.

The power of the news media in modern western countries is a double edged sword. On the one hand they inform us on every aspect of day to day political life, which, as well as being useful in its own right, also ensures that any shady dealings are more likely to be brought to light, which, in an ideal world, perhaps, keeps the politicians honest. On the other hand, of course, no section of the media is without its biases, and since as a whole they have what almost amounts to a monopoly on the information the public receive about politics, they can (if not explicitly, then inadvertently) lend their own weighting to issues. This leads to small stories being blown out of proportion, while potentially more important ones are ignored. And since most of us get our opinion of what is important in politics from the media (even if we try to stay objective, none of us has time to do our own research), this colours our views of politician and the political scene.

This post isn't about my opinion of the news media and its pros and cons, though. It's about how I believe politicians can do more to help the media be the best it can. And it's about Barack Obama (I know, I have like three set topics I talk about on here, huh).

Over the last few weeks, Obama has been releasing video clips addressing the public, describing his (and his soon-to-be-administration's) views on the issues of the moment (usually the economy, so far, unsurprisingly). These have been received well in general, and allow Obama to try to keep a human face on his presidency, as he descends into the maelstrom of bureaucracy and spin that is the White House.

The clips are being released on YouTube, as well as various other places, and are in keeping with the Obama campaigns ability to use the web effectively as a tool for organisation and communication. Looking at the Obama/Biden transition website confirms this too, as it outlines a huge number of policy objectives across the political spectrum, as well as invitations for the public to submit their own pressing issues to ensure that nothing has been forgotten.

In these senses, then, Obama is certainly using the internet, but I would love to see him using it more effectively and more fully. The video clips are a great gimmick, and an excellent way of connecting the administration directly to the public in a personal way, but are also too short to be of any real significance. With only three minutes per video, there's no time to really discuss the issues he raises. The video acts like a bullet point, when what I would like to see, and what I think would be more useful is a paragraph, or even an essay.

I'm not saying that the videos should be hours long and discuss each policy objective in interminable detail, indeed I think aside from the occasional longer one on a particular occasion, the videos are doing as much as they can do. Instead, what I would like to see is a real flow of information out of the White House and into the public eye. Not necessarily through the single outlet of the press room and the news media, but through the internet. The problem with a three minute video clip is that it forces a politician to sound the way they sound on the election trail, vague, well meaning, optimistic, and idealistic. Full of soundbites and slogans to catch the viewers interest. But sometime we want more than that, especially once the election is over, and the real work of governing begins. We want to know why decisions were made, why one policy is preferred to another, why this tax is going up and this one is going down, why this law is being repealed, and that one is being tightened. Exactly why, too. Not a soundbite, but an argument, backed up with statistics. And a public argument, facing up to the concerns and fears of the voters and of the political opposition. Not spin, unless you describe any government release as spin, but an honest account of what the government is doing, day to day, meeting to meeting, law to law.

Imagine a database of public-directed, government-released information, accessible online (and I'm not talking just about America and Obama here, he was merely the trigger for this - it can be imagined for any country). Kind of a combination of a rolling manifesto and the responses to petitions on the Downing street website. Every policy decision outlined in as much detail as possible. Opposition questions and complaints predicted and addressed (and with the database updated with new responses as new queries arise). An account of every vote and every meeting. Every government study and independent body would have their results released here, and every law discussed would be spelled out and broken down.

If a government is confident in their stance on a particular issue, then there should be no problem with this sort of public log of their intentions, their progress and their successes. And if a government is not confident of allowing public scrutiny of their intentions and decisions, then I would suggest that those intentions and decisions may need to be re-thought.

This kind of undertaking would be the best possible way to inform the public on government intentions and reasoning. The public, the media and the opposition would all be able to look at the argument put up by the government (and backed up by statistics and testimony) before responding. The government would be able to clearly and easily respond to specific concerns raised by any of these bodies, and it would be much harder for the party in power to be accused of dodging questions, or avoiding giving straight answers.

By building up a database of the governmental thought process, as it were, an administration also protects themselves to some extent against future queries about previous decisions. Why did the government decide to spend rather than save at this point? Well let's check the records and find the exact reasoning. Why was this policy supported, rather than something more strict, or more relaxed? Here's an article describing the pros and cons of each option, and the decisions that were taken in getting to a final choice. Links are provided, of course, to transcriptions or minutes of appropriate meetings and to any statistical reports or data used in the process.

Logistically, clearly, it is not something that could just be created overnight, and it would need to be built up over time (maybe it's even so impractical that it would be impossible to find the money or the manpower to support it), but I can't see any real reason why it would not work as a concept, and it seems to me that this kind of transparency would be a great antidote to the constant accusations of spin levelled at politicians.

Have the database run by an independent body if necessary, to avoid claims of government interference, ensure all data changes are logged, and all changes and additions read and approved by someone in some kind of authority.

Of course, all of this is based on my possibly ludicrously idealistic notion that it is possible to have a spin-free government, that takes responsibility for all of its actions, works constantly for the good of the country rather than the good of the party, and is confident enough about itself to be open, honest and accountable at all times. If that sort of government is something that can never happen, then the idea of any kind of transparent record of activity is clearly a pipe dream, and the best we can hope for is the twice-filtered reports from the news media. Though the idea that honest government is impossible would, I think, be a rather depressing outlook.

44th

It seemed like too much to hope for almost two years ago when he stood up on a cold February day in Illinois and announced that he was running for president. It seemed like something from fiction - something that the world, with all of its pain and hatred and cynicism would not allow to happen.

He can give a good speech, we said, but where's his experience? This isn't a local senate race - how can a Democrat honestly take on the Clintons, with all their influence and money and entitlement, and expect to win. America isn't ready for a black president, one step at a time. Back down, some said - don't rock the boat - get behind a more electable figure and wait your turn. Maybe in four years, or eight. Don't risk dividing the party over a pipe dream.

Even with the nomination gathered we were fearful. Sure, you can triumph against people who broadly share your views, but that's not a real triumph - what about the Republican smear machine? What will you do against the power of Karl Rove and Fox News? It's difficult enough for an old white Democrat to fight them, how does a relatively young, inexperienced black man expect to take on a war hero like McCain with all the backing and experience of the GOP's electoral team?

And yet last night the world watched into the early hours as America said that it was ready to take the next step, that it was ready for a change, ready for a Democrat, and ready for an African-American. We watched as Pennsylvania, visited by the Republicans 21 times during the campaign, threw itself behind him, closely followed by Ohio, home of Joe the Plumber. With no sign of the Bradley effect, Republicans were talking about what went wrong from the start of the night, and the BBC's coverage had all but named the new president from the start of the programme. With the race too close to call in four key states, we had to wait until 4am GMT for the big projection, as California and Washington state put their weight behind senator Barack Obama and pushed him over the magic 270 electoral votes.

There were many other states backing him, of course. In Virginia, where the populous north was described as not "real Virginia" by the Republicans, the north did its work, and took the state to the Democrats by four points. Florida finally threw off the memories of 2000, and turned itself blue, followed later by Indiana, which overturned a 20 point Republican margin from 2004. North Carolina, another solidly red state for eight years was too close to call through into this morning, with Obama holding onto a slender lead.

We watched McCain appear in Arizona and give a humble and gracious concession speech and then drove home listening to Obama's magnificent victory speech. In two and a half months time, he'll take on a country with huge financial, social and military problems both at home and abroad, without a filibuster-proof senate majority, and with a crippling global economic climate to contend with. It turns out the last 21 months of scrapping and debating and smears and slurs and great speeches and personal revelations and media scrutiny and rumours and robo-calls and polls and predictions and ups and downs was actually the easy bit. The real work starts here, and I couldn't be more confident in his ability to take it on.

Unbelieveable?

There's an interesting post from UK Polling Report, talking about the factors that might cause people to change their mind about a political candidate, if discovered. The results are interesting, and the post goes through them in a bit more detail, but the one that stands out to me is the one concerning atheism.

While in the UK only 20% would refuse to vote for an atheist, similar to the numbers for a gay or Muslim candidate, in the US the number was 53%. Note the question:

If your party nominated a generally well-qualified person for president who happened to be an atheist, would you vote for that person?

So 53% of the American electorate would refuse to vote for a member of their own party who happened to be an atheist. That is, given the binary presidential situation in the US, they would consider someone whose views they broadly agreed with (except, presumably, on religion) to be unsuitable for office, and would either actively help, or passively allow, someone with opposing political views to get into office instead.

Clearly, there is the possibility that some people may have answered a question that was not asked (Would you like an atheist to be president), instead of considering the exact phrasing of the query, but if we assume that this is not a large number (since otherwise the survey results are obviously useless), this means that 53% of the electorate would put the issue of their candidate's personal view on religion above all other issues. They might agree with their candidate on the economy, on immigration, on healthcare, on education, on Iraq, on oil, on the environment, on everything but whether God exists or not, and that would be enough for them to prefer someone who disagrees with them on all those matters to become president.

Perhaps in reality people would react differently - 38% of conservatives said they wouldn't vote for someone who was 72 years old, but McCain doesn't seem to have dropped that much of the Republican vote, suggesting that some of those could be won round by other factors. Also there is no allowance for the opponent's views, which could affect voters, or the existance of third candidates (which would seem to become more important if one of the major parties fielded a candidate with one of these "problem" characteristics).

Overall, the results pretty much exclude an 'out-of-the-closet' atheist candidate from openly appearing in any electoral race, simply because they will not be able to guarantee enough votes from their base to get official backing. They'll never get the votes because there is a large backdrop of prejudice against them across the board, and so they'd get no significant financial backing or public endorsements.

Looking at the historical data that's also linked, running as an atheist candidate today would be roughly equivalent to running as a woman in 1945, or as an African-American in 1958, both of which would be candidates running so much against ingrained prejudice as to have no chance of winning.

I'd encourage people to glance through the other results in those posts, too - there's lots of interesting data there on other demographics and historical comparisons.

So, would you vote for an atheist? And if not, why not?

Did the universe end while I wasn't looking?

Because while I would never normally condone anything Paris Hilton says/does/thinks (and I'm a little concerned that she feels the need to wear stilettoes while on a sun lounger), this is hysterical. And is also the first public evidence I've ever seen, aside from her millions of dollars, that she is, perhaps, not a total airhead.

See more Paris Hilton videos at Funny or Die

Below is the original John McCain ad that she was responding to.