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The Future of Congressional Testimonies
You have 5 minutes for your performance
Have you ever watched someone testify in front of Congress? It is a delightful game where our elected “leaders” bloviate for 3–5 minutes and occasionally ask leading questions and then people give testimonies in the form of non-answers. It is political theater at its finest. And by finest, I mean it is terrible for our democracy.
What kind of insights are going to be revealed in such adversarial non-conversations? What consensus is going to be built?
These testimonies have many times become shouting matches. Rarely, does a the public get new insight from those hearings. Neither of the legacy parties look good in the process. Even when they think they’ve successfully made their point, it is usually only serves to solidify our political polarization in this country.
Both legacy parties are just trying to win at all costs.
The legacy parties will do anything to make the other side look dumb and wrong. I’d love to see a respectful 3-hour conversation between two elected officials where they methodically work to find common ground and reveal insights.
We could be a country that learns and communicates well. But the process by which Congress holds hearings is just begging to be ignored.
It is all political theater. There is no societal wisdom inherent in the way Congress holds hearings. It is as if the legacy parties want to keep Americans in their simplistic two-party war. The legacy parties are destroying democracy, one hearing at a time.
