Democracy in America

Sorry, my friends, but the television broadcast of two Presidential candidates taking safe two-second sound bites out of questions pre-screened by conciliatory corporate broadcasting suits are not what might be described as a "town hall." See Yglesias for a critique with examples.

This is a town hall:

In the town meeting the people of a community assemble to discuss and to act upon matters of public interest--roads, schools, poorhouses, health, external defense, and the like. Every man is free to come. They meet as political equals. Each has a right and a duty to think his own thoughts, to express them, and to listen to the arguments of others. ...

[I]n that method of political self-government, the point of ultimate interest is not the words of the speakers, but the minds of the hearers. The final aim of the meeting is the voting of wise decisions. The voters, therefore, must be made as wise as possible. The welfare of the community requires that those who decide issues shall understand them. They must know what they are talking about. And this, in turn, requires that so far as time allows, all facts and interests relevant to the problem shall be fully and fairly presented to the meeting. Both facts and interests must be given in such a way that all alternative lines of action can be wisely measured in relation to one another. As the self-governing community seeks, by the method of voting, to gain wisdom in action, it can find it only in the minds of its individual citizens. If they fail, it fails.

Alexander Meiklejohn, in "Free Speech and its Relation to Self-Government" (1948)

Now of course, in a modern mass democracy with a multi-trillion-dollar GDP, it's difficult to approximate the old-fashioned New England town meeting. But surely there's some better way than the repetition of stage-managed questions over three or four months, isn't there? Are the issues of government too complex, or the voters too unqualified or too short of time, to follow anything but this glimpse of policy seen through a glass, darkly? Would the tone of political news coverage improve if we could open up the campaigns through the internet or other media?

Can't we do better than our celebrity journalism?

Edited 10/9: note the evolution of language that has expanded the meaning of 'town hall' from its original humble wooden statute.