John McCain’s transparency proposals

Despite all the evidence that the media are hijacking the role of scrutinising elected representatives, there are still some indications that the shift from legislators to journalists is about to be reversed.

Or at least that is a change which Republican Presidential Candidate Sen. John McCain would like to bring about. In a speech in Ohio in May 2008, Sen. McCain said that he would introduce a President’s Question Time, in which the President comes “before both Houses to take questions and address criticism, much the same as the Prime Minister of Great Britain appears regularly before the House of Commons.”

However, this greater emphasis on being accountable to the legislature has two great flaws. Firstly, in the House of Commons, Prime Minister’s Questions has been hijacked by “friendly” questions from the Prime Minister’s own party, political questions from the opposition and six questions from the leader of the opposition which inevitably turns the start of PMQs into a “slanging match”.

Secondly, Sen. McCain has promised to hold weekly press conferences, allowing journalists to continue to be chief scrutineers of the President’s performance. This would mean a continuation of the President following the will of the media, which is not always the same as that of the millions of voters who elected him, and all members of Congress, in the first place.

This is a sample of what I would write for the essay title: ‘In modern democracies the role of elected representatives is being hijacked by others’. Discuss. (Government and Politics Unit 8). It is provided so as to keep this site up-to-date whilst I continue to revise for my A-levels.