Building a Post-9/2 Politics: One foot in front of the other, for starters

I hereby present my annual award for Best Emotional Precision in Political Reporting for 2004:

US Inspires World With Attempt at Democratic Election

NEW YORK — Observers from around the world report that they were inspired and moved by America's most recent attempt to hold a public election in accordance with the standards of a democratic republic.

"After all of the recriminations, infighting, and general madness before the election, the people of this fractured nation still found the courage to show up at the polls," said Anas Salman, an Afghan U.N. official who was in New York during the American electoral experiment. "More than half of America's citizens—a large portion of them women—made a valiant attempt to choose their own leader, even though there was no guarantee their votes would be counted. It was truly inspirational."

In the weeks leading up to the election, both of America's political parties alleged fraud in voter registration. Additionally, experts debated the reliability of electronic voting machines, which experienced problems in trial runs and leave no paper trail. Election officials also bemoaned many states' use of outdated punchcard machines....[*].

How come newspapers like The Onion and people in Jon Stewart's line of work are the only media that actually report the news?

Okay, so here's the real thing we ca do to help today. The House Republicans' first order of business after the election was lowering the ethical restraints against themselves - so that Tom Delay will be able to stay Majority Leader even after being indicted by a grand jury. In a hotly contested closed-door voice voice, they voted to drop the rule - that is, to lower the ethical bar. Our job is to create buzz about the issue so that Congressman can be forced to say which way they voted on the rule (such a vote could be an liability in a re-election campaign).

Blogs, and the phone calls their readers make, really do have the potential to change the operation of politics in this bizarre new media world into which we have plunged. I find myself, actully, longing for the experience of the Persian Gulf War, when you watched the networks and you read the papers and yo us about shaming Congressmen into admitting which way they voited when they voted, in a closed-door voice vote, to drop a 1983 party rule that says you can't stay Majority Leader if you've been indicted (as Tom DeLay likely will). Their claim is that the coming indictments are politically motivated, but given the probable scale of Delay's corruption, this claim should really be plausible only to the naive or the right-wing core.

When you make calls like this, you'll feel like you're engaging in the ridiculous. And yet, that's what we've been reduced to, and that's why the Onion capture the spirit of the age so well.