Question Time!

AFTER watching question time for the prime minister in the British parliament American politicians are no longer impressive to me. Here in America we base the entirety of our political discourse on rhetoric. This has led to a government that appears to speak, but not say anything. Last year we saw a series of debates in January, and again in September and October that highlighted our firm grasp to rhetoric. If it ever seemed like neither candidate was very good at answering the question posed, it’s because American politicians weren’t made for debate. American politicians are built upon a framework of saying what they want you to hear and hoping that you think it sounds persuasive enough for you to support them. This allows them to dance around questions at debates and close their statements on an entirely different subject than that which was questioned. To most Americans, this makes debates horribly painful to watch, and leads to votes founded in a candidate’s charisma and charm.
IN Britain, the scene is much different. Every week the head of the government, the Prime Minister, enters the House of Commons to undergo Question Time. The Speaker of the House calls on anyone who wishes to pose a question to the Prime Minister to put him on the hot seat for a minute or two. My favorite are the questions asked by the leader of Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition. I watched the Prime Minister’s questions from January 21, 2009 and saw one of the weekly heated exchanges between the Right Honorable David Cameron, leader of the opposition, and Prime Minister Gordon Brown. At this time the British government stood in the middle of addressing their financial crisis. Cameron grilled Prime Minister Brown on the different measures that the government has taken to repair their crumbling economy and demanded answers, and with every question posed came hollers from the benches rooting him on and booing the Prime Minister. Here's the link to this and other sessions of question time.
THIS type of atmosphere requires the head of government to stand accountable for what he does. The same questioning period exists for members of the cabinet, and they stand accountable for the performance of their department. With the incessant nagging of the opposition staring at the ministers, many will resign when their departments have shown a sub-par performance, despite whether it’s their fault or not. The public gets to know what the Prime Minister is doing and his or her reasons on a weekly basis, something the American people may not get at all during a president’s term.
THIS day followed the inauguration of President Obama here in the states, and I just imagined how our previous president would have handled a weekly inquisition: a fiery Nancy Pelosi at one side of the table making a hiss and a byword out of the highly unpopular Bush administration. He wouldn’t have stood a chance against her, or anyone else, for that matter. Bush had a great speechwriter who prayed every night that the Commander in Chief wouldn’t try to say anything off the cuff.
I’M most impressed at all the knowledge that the Prime Minister must be able to hold in order to answer intelligently. He must be extremely well briefed in all his administration’s operations in order to provide real answers to questioners who will allow him to do nothing less. Simple monologues filled with generalized statements of rhetoric don’t hold water in Question Time, but from them we drink the finest tasting bull in the United States. Personally, I would like to see a government in the United States held more accountable for their actions like that in the United Kingdom, but I‘m not sure how many politicians would agree with me on that.