Hyperdemocracy

THE MOST VILIFIED EXPANSE OF asphalt in the history of the universe is, almost certainly, the Washington Beltway. Whereas most municipal freeways are associated with fairly mundane evils -- potholes, rush-hour traffic -- the Beltway has come to symbolize nothing less than a looming threat to American democracy. It is the great invisible buffer, impermeable to communication, that separates the nation's capital from the nation. It is what keeps many politicians -- the ones with an "inside the Beltway" mentality -- out of touch with the needs of the citizenry. It is the reason Washington's "media elites" are so clueless as to what's really on America's mind. It is why voters get congressional gridlock when they want action, and congressional action when they want nothing in particular. In a typical indictment, one columnist recently called some piece of Washington policymaking "too secret, too expert, too Beltway."

The solution, some observers say, is simple: use information technology to break through the Beltway barrier. Ross Perot champions an "electronic town hall," a kind of cyberdemocracy that, via push-button voting, would let people make the wise policy decisions their so-called representatives are failing to make for them. And now, vaguely similar noises are coming from someone with real power -- inside-the-Beltway power, no less. Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, who last week spoke at a Washington conference called Democracy in Virtual America, is trying to move Congress toward a "virtual Congress." He envisions a House committee holding "a hearing in five cities by television while the actual committee is sitting here." He's also letting C-SPAN's cameras, the electorate's virtual eyeballs, peer into more congressional hearings. And under a new program called "Thomas," after Thomas Jefferson, all House documents are being put on the Internet for mass perusal by modem. Thomas, says Gingrich, will shift power "toward the citizens out of the Beltway." It will get "legislative materials beyond the cynicism of the elite." And as this online material sparks online debate, Americans can "begin to have electronic town-hall meetings."

This may sound visionary, but it's nothing compared with the vision sketched by Gingrich's favorite futurists, Alvin and Heidi Toffler, in their book Creating a New Civilization. The Tofflers view the old-fashioned, physical Congress as suffering from a progressive erosion of relevance that calls for a wholesale rethinking of the Constitution. "Today's spectacular advances in communications technology open, for the first time, a mind-boggling array of possibilities for direct citizen participation in political decision-making." And since our "pseudo-representatives" are so "unresponsive," we the people must begin to "shift from depending on representatives to representing ourselves."