Thursday, January 12, 2012
Media / Politics / News Bites / Clout City The Quiet Rooms—formerly known as the Back Rooms
Posted by Michael Miner on 01.12.12 at 03:00 PM
On his blog, Zorn has posted a transcript of Romney's conversation Wednesday with Today show host Matt Lauer. "I think it’s about envy. I think it’s about class warfare," said Romney. Lauer was puzzled. He asked, "Do you suggest that anyone who questions the policies and practices of Wall Street and financial institutions, anyone who has questions about the distribution of wealth and power in this country, is envious?" And Romney said there's a time and a place for questions such as these, and that place isn't the campaign trail. "You know," said Romney, "I think it’s fine to talk about those things in quiet rooms and discussions about tax policy and the like."
Quiet rooms. Where policy gets made and emotions aren't allowed to run high.
But where to find a good quiet room? Government is so damned noisy.
As Romney fleshes out his idea, he might want to boast about his access to Washington's unrivaled authority on the quiet room. This would be former vice president Dick Cheney. While the George W. Bush administration was under way, Cheney hammered out the nation's energy policy as head of an Energy Task Force that held meetings with top executives and lobbyists of the oil, coal, gas, electricity, and nuclear power industries. They met in rooms so quiet that it took lawsuits to tease out any information at all about who was in them.
It was decorum's finest hour. If Romney intends to emulate Cheney's example he needs to say so.
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I've been in quiet rooms. Quiet rooms, it is commonly said, are necessary for the "frank" discussions that keep the gears of industry and government from getting all gummed up. Maybe so. It certainly seems reasonable. And I think most people would agree. I agreed.
But then, due to personal circumstances, I had reason to search my memory and notes, and I was surprised. First of all, I noted that I could divide the things said in such discussions into precisely two categories: 1) stuff that was said that could have been said in public without embarrassment, and 2) stuff that was said that could not have been said in public without embarrassment.
That's to be expected. But the surprise was this: After careful, methodical checking, at no point could I trace any result that was constructive or beneficial or even arguably ethical that ensued from the second category of stuff -- the stuff that couldn't have been said in public without embarrassment. In fact, the "industry" involved would have benefited measurably had someone from the public been sitting in on these meetings to keep an eye on us scoundrels -- in other words, if the rooms hadn't been so quiet.
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