Citizen Shepherds: A Proposal

Just had this idea ...

What if the netroots develop the concept of one or more individuals working full-time as shepherds of the legislative process?

Not so much making particular legislation go through, but rather ensuring the maximum transparency as to what is going on with the legislative process around any or all bills, in other words shepherding democracy itself, within the interplay between all persons who control the outcome of a bill.

So, here are an assortment of ideas about how this could go and why it's needed

more ...

For democracy to actually take place, a truly free and fair debate must go on, that the citizens are fully aware of.

Right now, we don't exactly have that.
The debate, of course, that determines outcomes, is largely conducted by our representatives in government, which is how the system is designed.

But the reason this is ok, is that in theory we know what the representatives think, what they say, and most importantly, why they do so.
If representatives simply vote, that's not enough.
It tells us in a way where they stand at a point in time, in the context of the process at that moment.
But it discloses nothing of the reasoning that finally determined outcomes.
Many times it can appear to be the case that outcomes are chosen, and noone understands why.

This undermines democracy itself, the sense that it is happening, and also leads citizens to develop a down-beat attitude towards govt, policy, debate, democracy, and thus to turn to protest voting or not voting or not caring, etc.
All of which just feeds on itself and makes society that much less functional.

Now, don't we already get enough info about the process?
I'd say not.
We get lots of quantity of info, lots of words and factoids, but it's not clear how this is all being digested by representatives in govt, what they are doing with it, and how or if they are translating that into a specific reasoning that leads to a specific vote they make.

When they run for reelection, many of the votes are forgotten or hard to explain.
When they give speeches at a later date, they may talk about abstractions which are good, but again not clear how or if they tie to actual voting.

Litmus test politics, where you vote for someone in return for a mandate they make a particular vote, also does not help, as it also undermines the spirit of real debate, which is the basis of democracy.

Ok, now on to the Shepherds.

Shepherds would be individuals nominated perhaps by the blogosphere, or self-nominated.
If chosen, they would get a fellowship allowing them to work full-time on this duty.

There would be a Shepherd website.
It would contain up-to-the-minute info about the status of the debate on all bills being considered.
That info would go beyond just an aggregation of info and links like opencongress has, beyond specific fact-checking like factcheck has.
It builds on work done at TPM in terms of tracking positions and sussing out where people stand.
But this would have a clear, consistent and limited mission, and accountability to that.
It would attempt to sift through it all, and present, in the Shepherd's words, a summary of all active positions in the debate.
Then it would show which representatives were currently aligned with each of those positions.

The Shepherds would spend a lot of time on the phone and email with representatives, their staff, lobbyists, executive branch members, experts, movement representatives of various kinds, think tank leaders, etc.
They would constantly seek to update and clarify positions, as the main debate positions shifted, split, merged or dissolved.
As well they would constantly check with voting representatives about their personal position and what nuances they had going on.

The technology could develop over time, so that representatives could update their stances live, via internet, and not always have to do phone calls.
Eventually this could even be hooked in with the blackberries of representatives and they could update any time, or add to the conversation.

The Shepherd's duty would be to guarantee that, at a moment in time, citizens could log on and see the actual status of the debate which is the basis of democracy, seeing all considerations in play summarized and the political alignment as it stood.

It would basically be informational, not a lobbying operation.
It could either be non-partisan, or bi-partisan, but attempt to accurately depict each distinct position in the debate, in a manner that could be understood and accepted as valid by those holding that position.
So, it would not caricature positions, but attempt to simply gather and simplify them; but also link to fact-checking and debunking that might pertain.

This would, over time, lead to the development of a neutral language for describing debate positions in American politics, which itself would be healthy, and lead to deeper listening on everyone's part, as to what the other guys were saying.

The Shepherds could serve for some months or a year, and then be rotated.

At the beginning, they might focus on a small number of bills, and you could perhaps have one Shepherd for each issue area.
As funding allowed, the team could expand.

Q and A would be supported on the website, so the public could push the Shepherds to dig deeper or reconsider their presentation of a side in the debate.

Links to current public opinion polling could be included as well, and eventually polling could be commissioned by the Shepherd organization, to fill in gaps not covered by other polling organizations.

Links to speeches could be included, including expert summaries that would make the issues clear to the average person.

In a way this is just a formalization of what the blogosphere and media currently do, but gives a specific mission-statement to a group of individuals, to produce a neutral, complete, concise, coherent, live and dynamic representation of the debate.