What if politicians maintained wikis that reflect their internal state?
I've been reading about objective reporting, use of the Internet in campaigns, and political media in general recently for a class I'm taking. Here's what I'm aware of today:
- Blogs written by staffers
- YouTube spots made by pro and con groups
- Candidate and party websites, again written by staff spinsters and media consultants
Blogs reflect conversations. Posts age and often become historical rather than salient over time. Comments are closely censored^Wmonitored.
Politician-originated websites and YouTube videos/channels (including opposition items) suffer from similar problems. They hold carefully crafted messages that have been so carefully groomed that the politician underneath is indiscernible. This is what every politician wants: it's easy to say what your audience wants to hear when no one knows what you've already said or done.
I suggest an experiment. Were I ever capable and willing to enter politics, I would like to try this.
Each politician maintains a wiki encompassing their thoughts, intents, and history. It would probably be oriented around artifacts (speeches, votes), issues (abortion, House Bill #76598374918, drought handling), entities (lobbyists, coalitions, politicians), and events (lobbyist meetings (educational events, right?), position changes, 9/11?, deals made). This allows constituents to get an idea of what is currently happening in their own government, as well as allowing them to see what the politician's track record is. Issue pages may allow for individuals to submit materials for the staff to review and pass on to the politician with a history of such artifacts and their relevance to the page's content. Anyone, including opposing media consultants (!?) could subscribe to all changes made to any given page, essentially turning such changes into requests for comments visible to all interested. A candidate could lay out his or her background in order to explain why certain choices were made.
One issue entry might have these pieces (all with appropriate crosslinks, of course!):
[Issue description] To date, 452 of my constituents have made it clear that rising prescription costs are threatening their standard of living. Other politicians have heard similar problems, and House Bill #777 was introduced to constrain these cost increases against inflation.
[9/9/2999: Meeting with Pfizer lobbyist] I learned today from a Pfizer representative that the methodology in the bill--price-capping of individual brand-name medications while leaving generics untouched was profoundly unfair, in that the generic companies have no research costs to recoup while extensive FDA regulations make start-to-market costs per drug exceed $4 billion. The rep specifically did not ask for reduction in drug safety criteria, and suggested that, instead, a government subsidy matched by discounts from the company targeted at low-income individuals [IRS definition, 309(c)(2)] would be the preferred route.
[Current Status on Bill, updated 9/13/2999] Planning to bring up matched-subsidy idea at next Healthcare Oversight Committee meeting [10/10/2999], which is currently debating HB777. I still prefer the inflation cap, as an estimated 35% of my constituency need something to happen and this measure will save them less money.
It would have to be driven to be honest, complete, and authentic--overall positive, but willing to admit and gracefully handle negatives without stage-makeup-level polish or blatant whitewashing. It would not be written without spin, but it would need to avoid the staff wheedling every last iota into something positive as well as the opposition driving even mundane statements into the ground as embarrassing gaffes. It will take significant resources (manpower) to do this for even one politician.
Done right, it would be the single most useful resource a voter could use. Standardized and popularized, it could lead to interesting big data and linguistic processing research. Done wrong, it would be less useful than current media sources. The incentives are all wonky in this version, but it would be so...awesome. Like pie in the sky.
I'm afraid I've described a raw contradiction in terms to you. I hope you like it.
