The target of my center digit gesture this morning was heading out to the suburbs to, ostensibly, hold a “town meeting.”
Generally speaking, I’d say that a town meeting was an open forum for citizens to discuss topics of concern.
Not as far as the Bush campaign is concerned. The event, called “Ask President Bush,” was in reality a “praise President Bush” event where attendance was limited to party loyalists. As always, the general public was not allowed to attend, and certainly not able to ask questions.
An interesting story on today’s All Things Considered examines the tightly controlled campaign of George W. Bush, where asking questions is forbidden… but praise is welcome, if you’re loyal enough to get a ticket. Remember the Cheney appearance where attendees were required to sign an oath of loyalty?
This whole thing reminds me of the late Soviet Union, where only party members were allowed in the game.
Two questions: isn’t the president supposed to represent all the people? (I know, silly question when applied to the current officeholder.) Second, what is the point of constantly campaigning to people who are not only going to vote for you already, but have signed oaths to that effect? I can only assume that the point of this is to generate television footage which makes it appear that the president has overwhelming support from the general populace out there in the audience. They’re not an audience — they’re part of the show, and they’ve been coached to yell “Four more years!” before the show begins.
Yet another way our president is a fraud.
