John Kitzhaber, the former Democratic Oregon governor who's seeking a third term, tried something a little different this afternoon: A Facebook discussion on health care. People would post and comment, and Kitzhaber would weigh in with comments and some answers to questions. It may be a useful direction for his and other campaigns to come.
The results in this case? So-so. The participants around the spectrum (and they were decidedly not all from the left) generally gave him praise for the effort, and the half-hour session did yield quite a few viewpoints. Kitzhaber's own comments were intermittent and brief (some of that owing to the format), and often suggestive of bullet points.
Scanning through the comments overall, so many cry out for more explication. Bullet-points seem to be the mode of political and policy thought these days; facts are ammunition to fire at the other side. Some of the participants didn't seem to have an interest in putting the pieces together, though a minority did. And some of it wandered off into the mists of political philosophy, where such matters as solving problems based on facts-on-the-ground often get left behind.
Consider this exchange (in which Kitzhaber doesn't appear): (more…)