President Obama's rare, if not unprecedented debate with congressional members of the opposition party on Friday in front of television cameras not only made for good TV, but it may have pointed the way out of ideological divide and gridlock in Washington.

What we have today is a closely divided nation along many lines, but at bottom conservative versus liberal --- in both the cultural and economic senses --- with an increasingly small center capable of swinging one way or the other on issues. Part of the reason the division seems so sharp and intractable is that both sides snipe each other continually through the media and only very rarely go head-to-head in debate before the public.

That doesn't mean the cable TV talking heads, either, but our actual leaders at any level. When, for instance, do we see them truly debating national or state issues when it is not a scripted event, with both sides merely mouthing their talking points. The answer is almost never.

What this does is allow the two sides to talk past one another and play to their bases, making points the faithful already acknowledge but like hearing anyway. Yet on Friday, the president and several Republican members of the House engaged in a spirited back-and-forth on a number of issues, and it was an illuminating display. Both sides were revealed as human beings, not cardboard caricatures that are daily created by partisans on Fox and MSNBC, to name the two most polarized media outlets on cable TV.

The

Advertisement
same is true of the Internet, which is divided into Web sites with for-and-against, left-or-right points of view. None provides a "fair and balanced" picture that was gained in the one public exchange in Baltimore on Friday. Issues like health care, taxes, the federal debt and the stimulus plan were fleshed out with points and counterpoints from both sides.

Such exchanges are, of course, routine in Britain, which has a regular Question Time for the prime minister and his cabinet on the floor of Parliament. Woe to the PM who can't stand there and defend his agenda and talk over cries of "hear hear" or "no no" from the backbenchers. This is just what we have lacked, and it has led to a presidency too isolated from the Congress and rough back and forth of debate.

Having regular sessions like the one Friday, or with members of both major parties and the president, would provide Americans with a clearer picture of what their leaders are truly like and what they really think. Most, we would guess, will duck this type of exposure whenever possible, because those who do not belong in leadership positions would be exposed in a hurry. But our democracy would only benefit.