"This is not the British Parliament, and I hope it never will become the British Parliament," protested Sen. Trent Lott (Miss.), the chamber's No. 2 Republican. "Are we going to bring the president in here and have a question period like the prime minister has in Great Britain?
Putting aside the fact that this whole "we're not a parliament" argument is dumb, is there something bad about instituting an equivalent of "Prime Minister's questions"? It will never happen, of course, but it does not strike me as a bad thing to force the President to leave Pennsylvania Avenue every once and awhile and publicly articulate and defend his agenda in front of lawmakers.
This is a fairy tale idea that will never come to be, but nonetheless I'm confused as to why Senator Lott decided to use it as a paradigmatic example of the ridiculous outcomes we might see if Congress became more "parliamentary." If voting no-confidence in Gonzalez would also mean a trend towards greater public engagement with the executive, hey, that's a hell of bonus feature.
2 comments:
Maybe he was worried that Southerners such as himself would come off like the Welsh. (Insert sheep joke.)
C-X? C-X? Who calls cross examination C-X, you pen-flipping, impact turning, spew-tron? Huh? The debate link indeed.
(Please excuse me if you have already self-disclosed this, or dont know what the fuck I am talking about)
As you were
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