Policy Theater for People Who Don't Read Policy
Big speeches. Bigger feelings. Zero solutions.
Somewhere in Washington, a three-hundred-page bill exists. This morning, seventeen elected officials went on television to describe what the bill does, does not do, and will absolutely definitely do. None of them have read it. Two of them wrote it.
The bill's authors have graciously agreed not to read it either, on the grounds that reading it would spoil the impassioned speeches they've written about it. The speeches, we are told, are 'important'.
“I have concerns,” said one senator, who did not name a single one, because naming them would have required specifics.
Public opinion, meanwhile, was measured with the precision of a horoscope. 62% of Americans support the bill. 61% oppose it. 78% have never heard of it. All three of these numbers were reported as major victories, by different networks, on the same day.
The bill will pass. Or it won't. Either way, the theater has already been paid for.
