Word: beltways
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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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...
...Senate veteran Jim Sasser by campaigning against the things Sasser was for: gun control, abortion rights and Washington pols telling people not to smoke in Old Smoky country. The main requirements for success among the neophytes were work in a field unrelated to government, a life lived outside the Beltway except for the odd trip to see the monuments, and a Democratic incumbent as hoary as one of the marble buildings on the Gray Line tour...
...only the news center of the world, but in the nature of our program, which takes public policy and the democratic process seriously, Washington has increasingly become the NewsHour's center of gravity anyway." He and his colleagues deny that the show will become a prisoner of the Beltway. Says Al Vecchione, president of MacNeil/Lehrer Productions: "A year from now, audiences will see the same program they've always seen...