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Then we were left with what I said.

Jay McCarthy responds to my response to his etcetera:

[P]eople should convince themselves and those interested should be given opportunities to connect to each other to further refine what their own beliefs are. I simply disagree fundamentally (to my assertion that candidates should convince voters on issues -ed.). If something is a truly good policy then the only reason that more people don’t support it is because they either (a) haven’t heard of it or it’s reasons for support, which is solved by discussion tools; or, (b) they have lost faith in the government and politicians to actually do what is best.

Yes. They should. But they do not. And relying on the interest of the people in, say, the nuances of health care reform, or sugar subsidies, or even diplomacy, is destined to disappoint anyone who’s looking to make policy. (In the case of the Bush administration, this is immaterial, since anyone who disagrees is a “focus group.”)

The thing is, few of us are lawyers, and even fewer of us subscribe to the Congressional Record. We do not know — we cannot know — the content and context of the laws being proposed, not to mention the agendas of those involved. Things get twisted around. That’s politics. What we can do, realistically, is follow the people and organizations who represent themselves to match our individual politics. That includes aligning oneself with a candidate, or, say, the Sierra Club, the Heritage Foundation, the Cato Institute, etc., in order to have a better grasp of things. Simply reading the paper, or watching TV, is insufficient. I think Jay will agree with me on that. But the point I’m trying to make is that politics are complex by nature.

I don’t think that putting everyone in front of a message board is a solution, either. Half of the country still doesn’t use the Internet regularly, and even fewer use it daily. Jay, you and I are the exception. People will not on the whole voluntarily make time to argue politics on a Web site. Remember also that pegging participation in anything to the Internet is a heavy burden for those who can’t afford computers or, say, free time, which means the current state of discussion skews rich. The use of technology and community in the 2004 election is a good sign, but not a panacea.

Jay continues:

To me this is another example of Matt May’s disbelief that democracy is something to aspire for or that the people should actually be listened to. We want these people to have the immense power of government, yet we accept that they don’t have the time to actually listen to us?

The entire purpose of representative democracy is to ensure that the will of the people is done in a calm, reasoned fashion. People get to make their elected officials listen at the rate of once every two to six years. Certainly, officials who doesn’t listen at all while defying the will of the constituency will be removed in due time — or immediately, if their offenses are egregious. (This has been changed in the last few years in California to “egregious or politically expedient”. So, it’s apparent that not everyone is on board with this deal.)

But laws of physics, specifically relating to space-time, limit the ability of humans to listen to everyone around them. There comes a time when a politician has to make a call, and that’s what we elect them to do. The best we can ask of candidates who need to reach out to voters is that they be honest, confident, and have some convictions upon which we can rely. We can give candidates our opinions, and vote on their stances on them, but eventually, they have to make decisions on a day-to-day basis, and each one is going to upset some group of constituents.

I have a laundry list of problems with the social dynamics of the political scene. Many of them go away when the money is taken out of politics. Some do not. But on the whole, I’m happier with this than I would be with a direct democracy of 280 million people. If everyone voted on September 12, 2001, the entire Middle East would today be a sheet of glass.