We, the Stunted
Whose fault is it that the Web plays no role in politics?
Consider the cornucopia of unbiased political information the Net already offers. Would you like biographies, issue positions, and voting records on 40,000 candidates, from president to City Council members? Nonpartisan Project Vote Smart (www.vote-smart.org) provides this and more, for free. Want to track down campaign contributions, by candidates--or by donor name, ZIP code, or company? OpenSecrets.org is the place to go, and it too is free.
These and other sites place at the fingertips of any voter connected to the Net information that would make the Founders weep with joy. If these databases were consulted, we would become models of a well-informed citizenry. Yet paradoxically, the more information that is placed online, the less we collectively seem to be interested in it. It has arrived too late to save us from ourselves. Television has conditioned us to prefer images over substance, the simple over the complex.
It has not always been so. In Peoria, Ill., in 1854, Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas tangled in an early debate, and what's most striking is their audience's appetite for seven hours of sophisticated discourse.
By contrast, this year's campaign centered for how many weeks on close textual analysis of Al's kiss of Tipper and George W.'s of Oprah. Meatspace politics is not about to go away.
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