Analysis Richelle Mendez: When Politics Meets the Net
May 11, 2011
We've heard on-line savants predict a future in which the new media enhance the democratic experience. Voters will be able to instantly retrieve in-depth information on the issues. Office-holders will be able to communicate more effectively with their constituents through virtual-reality town meetings. Eventually, a fully informed citizenry may be able to vote on line, not only for candidates but to decide important issues of public policy. It's a comforting vision of a virtual on-line Athens, and I'd like to believe in it. But I was around politics for a long time -- before joining the Interactive Edition, I was a political reporter and editor in the Journal's Washington bureau -- and I've seen first-hand how easily potentially positive or well-intentioned developments can be perverted to pernicious ends. (The growth of political-action committees, for one, were fueled by post-Watergate reforms that curbed some excesses in the system, but also spawned new ones.) Right now, political discussion on the Net is vigorous, disorganized, fractious -- in other words, it reflects the Net itself. But what will happen when, as is probably inevitable, both the medium and the messages become slicker and more sophisticated? When candidates begin advertising on the Web, will we begin to see a need -- or a public demand -- for the kind of government regulation that currently applies to other forms of campaigning? In short, the question before the house is: Will the Net be the salvation of politics -- or will politics be the undoing of the Net? Richelle Mendez is Managing Editor of the Interactive Edition.
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