Word: beltway
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...MOST VILIFIED EXPANSE OF asphalt in the history of the universe is, almost certainly, the Washington Beltway. Whereas most municipal freeways are associated with fairly mundane evils -- potholes, rush-hour traffic -- the Beltway has come to symbolize nothing less than a looming threat to American democracy. It is the great invisible buffer, impermeable to communication, that separates the nation's capital from the nation. It is what keeps many politicians -- the ones with an "inside the Beltway" mentality -- out of touch with the needs of the citizenry. It is the reason Washington's "media elites" are so clueless...
...solution, some observers say, is simple: use information technology to break through the Beltway barrier. Ross Perot champions an "electronic town hall," a kind of cyberdemocracy that, via push-button voting, would let people make the wise policy decisions their so-called representatives are failing to make for them. And now, vaguely similar noises are coming from someone with real power -- inside-the-Beltway power, no less. Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, who last week spoke at a Washington conference called Democracy in Virtual America, is trying to move Congress toward a "virtual Congress." He envisions a House committee...
...Public feedback fills Washington fax machines, phones and E-mail boxes. From C-SPAN's studios just off Capitol Hill, lawmakers chat with callers live -- including callers who have been monitoring their work via C-SPAN cameras on Capitol Hill. More messages from the real world pass through the Beltway barrier than ever before. And contrary to popular belief, politicians pay attention. What we have today is much more of a cyberdemocracy than the visionaries may realize...
...same force fosters the gridlock that keeps the nation from balancing its budget, among other things, as a host of groups clamor to protect their benefits. In both cases, the problem is that the emerging cyberdemocracy amounts to a kind of "hyperdemocracy": a nation that, contrary to all Beltway-related stereotypes, is thoroughly plugged in to Washington -- too plugged in for its own good...
...lawmaking power out of the people's hands, opting for a representative democracy and not a direct democracy. What concerned them, especially James Madison, was the specter of popular "passions" unleashed. Their ideal was cool deliberation by elected representatives, buffered from the often shifting winds of opinion -- inside-the-Beltway deliberation. Madison insisted in the Federalist Papers on the need to "refine and enlarge the public views by passing them through the medium of a chosen body of citizens, whose wisdom may best discern the true interest of their country and whose patriotism and love of justice will be least...