While seated in the barber's chair this afternoon, my rather erudite barber had the TV tuned into C-SPAN and question time in the British Parliament was being broadcast. According to Wikipedia, "Question time in a parliament occurs when members of the parliament ask questions of government ministers (including the prime minister), which they are obliged to answer."
Obliged to answer!
What a novel concept, foreign to our form of government. For the elected representatives of the people to ask questions of the leaders of government which must be answered.
In no way recommending the parliamentary system for our country, it would nevertheless be refreshing and invigorating for the President and Cabinet to be "obliged to answer" directly those questions put to them in a public forum by members of Congress. Instead, we endure carefully scripted and staged byplay between spokesmen/women of various entities. Or vacuous, unchallenged statements from this elected official or that, often times offering as fact unfounded and ridiculous utterances. And the so called press conferences POTUS rarely convenes are equally orchestrated. He controls who is permitted to ask a question, an exercise of the ultimate in control in a free country.
As a result, our government's leaders are almost never called to answer the people. They are never called to task, so to speak.
While viewing the British question time, I was also struck by the civility of it all. None of the corse language increasingly, if not incessantly dominating American politics.
It would be very refreshing to institute question time in our country.
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