We are coming up on week two of the new Obama administration and hope is turning into action. He’s been checking the box on government transparency, torture, the global gag rule and now automobile fuel efficiency. He’s turned the usual 100 day measuring stick into 100 hours and his approval rating is hanging around 75 percent.
Let’s not be fooled into a sense that world changed overnight and everyone woke up in a shiny happy get along world. Much of our politics is driven by ideologues with a narrow agenda so we need to be conscious of creating environment that listens to different viewpoints in an open and honest way. Otherwise the people who hold the power change but real systemic change never happens because citizens only listen to the ideas they want to hear. There may be more information at people’s finger tips but so are the tools to filter everything else out. This leaves people uninformed and uninterested because the only news they see is mudslinging and score keeping.
That type of journalism just drives the spike deeper into the divides that exist in this country. The most recent example of this is the attack of Robert Reich on comments made about the stimulus package by conservative pundits. His talk of inclusiveness is used as a bludgeon to stoke fear and anger.
A large majority of Americans may be happy with our current leadership but we have a long way to go in healing our partisan wounds. One important item our new President may want to add to his list is a renewed journalistic ethic that works to elevate the national discourse and not let it devolve into a handful of dangerous echo chambers.
