The Dialogue Venture

Posts Tagged ‘Obama’

Every once in a while, I try listening to Rush Limbaugh. I never make it past the first five minutes.

Perhaps that’s my loss.

To explore that statement, let’s start with President Obama’s commencement address at the University of Michigan. (If you haven’t read it yet, do yourself a favor and visit the site. Many aspects of dialogue that we’ve discussed here appear there as well. Only he’s way more eloquent.) During the speech, Obama gave this advice:

If you’re somebody who only reads the editorial page of The New York Times, try glancing at the page of The Wall Street Journal once in a while.  If you’re a fan of Glenn Beck or Rush Limbaugh, try reading a few columns on the Huffington Post website.  It may make your blood boil; your mind may not be changed.  But the practice of listening to opposing views is essential for effective citizenship. 

Several good things happen when we “listen to opposing views.” When we hear conservatives articulate conservative stances, or liberals speak from their experience as liberals, we get a firsthand, unfiltered view of that perspective—unfiltered, that is, by their adversaries’ use of terms like wingnut or socialist to inflame passions and thus obscure the details. Even if we don’t agree, we can at least see where they’re coming from. More often than not, we can see that their argument has some logical thought behind it, that they’re trying to grapple with the same issues we are, even that one or two of their insights might make sense.

Then, when we actually engage the “other side” in dialogue, we’re not thinking of them as wingnuts or socialists. Our perspective has moderated. Perhaps our anger has abated. That paves the way for deeper, more effective dialogue.

On another front, a “balanced media diet” doesn’t just facilitate dialogue; it is dialogue. As we absorb our adversaries’ insights, we naturally stimulate our own thinking—whether we’re marshaling counterarguments or just trying to draw out the opposing insight to its logical conclusion. The dialogue is happening in our heads. That in itself prepares us to be more curious and more civil when we have the dialogue with others.  

So how do we balance our media diet? It’s not all that hard, but there’s a bit more to it than meets the eye—even a bit more than Obama articulated in his address. Let’s look at that next week.

What would happen if you could express your opinions directly to federal government agencies—before they make the decisions that affect your life? What if they paid attention?

That’s what the White House is aiming for. Earlier this week, the Obama administration released its Open Government Directive—an initiative to connect federal government agencies more closely with the public they serve. Much of the directive deals with transparency: publishing more data more promptly, creating open-government pages for each agency website, and so forth.

But transparency is only one-third of the equation. The directive also requires the agencies to integrate public participation into their decision making and use multiparty collaboration—with other agencies, nonprofits, even individuals—to pursue their core missions.

According to a White House press release on the website for the National Coalition for Dialogue & Deliberation (of which I’m honored to be a member), “The directive stems largely from the unprecedented Open Government Initiative…in which the Administration reached out directly to the American people for specific policy recommendations.  Thousands of citizens participated in the online forums and offered ideas on how to transform the government into a more transparent, accountable, participatory operation.”

Several nuggets in that last sentence. First, this just might work. Clearly the government modeled public participation in creating the whole Open Government Directive, and thousands of citizens responded. Second, online technology facilitates participation on a level unheard of in previous generations. Third, although agencies have long provided opportunity for public comment on pending regulation, this directive aims at institutionalizing the whole notion of open government—spreading it into every aspect of agency culture.

This is still embryonic, of course, and a ton of questions remain. The directive doesn’t mandate specific steps—simply that agencies create plans for open government. Changing bureaucracies, by its very nature, is arduous and takes time. Some dialogue professionals are underwhelmed with this effort, seeing it as focusing too much on transparency and not enough on participation or collaboration.

But the thought that our government might actually want to dialogue with us is a refreshing change from business as usual. Stay tuned.