C-SPAN Wants in on House, Senate's "Informal Negotiations"
BY Nancy Scola | Tuesday, January 5 2010
It's probably fair to say that candidate Obama's pledge to have health care reform negotiations "televised on C-SPAN" never made a tremendous amount of actual sense, though it sounded awfully good. Set aside the closed-door multi-channeled chaos that is the legislative process when it comes to how Congress cobbles together bills this big, it's Congress doing the cobbling, not, generally speaking, the White House. It's sort of like inviting you over to watch the Super Bowl at my neighbor's house. You might want to check with my neighbor first.
So we're seeing C-SPAN CEO Brian Lamb asking congressional leaders if they'll allow the televising of the final health care negotiations as they attempt to reconcile the differences between the House and Senate health care bills. Mother Jones' David Corn has the story, and you can see the letter for yourself here. If you had to make a bet, it's probably not all that smart to wager on Pelosi and Reid actually allowing C-SPAN cameras in. (Boehner, not surprisingly, has quickly given a thumbs up to the idea. ) Those with authority can get awfully touchy about allowing decontexualized streaming of themselves as they go about their day, something C-SPAN knows well from its attempts to get the Supreme Court to allow the cameras into the court room.
But in the absence of a "yes" from Pelosi et al, the least that the congressional leadership could do hear is to explain just why it is that it's impossible to have cameras in on the negotiations. And something with facts, and, like, constructed arguments. The way it works with the Supreme Court, they rely upon vague notions of upholding the propriety of the judicial process. "Why should I be a party to the miseducation of the American people?," is the sort of discussion-killer Justice Antonin Scalia is known to toss off, without offering much reasoning to explain how cameras would leave the viewing public less informed. For better or worse, the Supreme Court (and the Chief Justice in particular) is accorded a huge amount of deference in how they run their shop.
Congress is a bit different. It is the people's body. It is the house where democracy rules. Pelosi and the rest may well have good arguments as to why having cameras inside the health care negotiations is simply untenable. After all, the legislative process is as already clogged up with procedure as it is. Or they might be operating upon baseless assumptions. But walking the public through what they see those reasons to be? Seems like that would be educational.