With all due respect to Dr. James Fishkin — who looks like a very nice man
and for whom I sort of feel sorry because he threw this big party and the
presidential candidates and the press didn’t come and people keep criticizing
his idea — if my sister Cindy and I ran a National Issues Convention, we’d do
things a little differently:
* We would not serve beans to 459 anxious delegates right before they had to
sit in a confined space for more than four hours during a live television
broadcast.
* We would not let the Austin Chamber of Commerce host the Welcome to Our Hick
Cowboy Town banquet on Friday night. Armadillo races? Line dance lessons?
* We would not have allowed such a vast overuse of the greeting “HOWDY!”
* For $3.9 million, we’d squeeze in more facts. The 14-page tabloid, “Issues
’96”, which served as the delegates’ “guide to public deliberation,” was
conservatively peppered with a few facts, most of them not attributed to any
source. Some of the statements were highly questionable, like the assertion
that “most other industrialized nations, which provide all families with child
care, health care, and financial assistance when necessary… have healthier
children and fewer social problems.” Like France, for instance? Instead, we’d
give a computer to each group crammed with as much information — facts,
studies, numbers — as our $3.9 million would buy.
* We wouldn’t pay the delegates to come; we’d pay the candidates. If they
didn’t answer questions they were asked or lapsed into campaign-ese, delegates
could throw wadded up balls of paper at them.
* Every group would get to ask at least one question.-S.B.
This article appears in February 2 • 1996 and February 2 • 1996 (Cover).