Too Much Success Is A Problem?

[Note:  I'm having some financial problems right now.  I know my timing is atrocious, given all the fund raisers lately, but if you can spare a little more, please donate to my "cat food for me and Home Boy" fund.  Thank you.]

When I saw this article earlier in the week, I chuckled.  Then I got to thinking about it and got a little annoyed.  The White House came up with what I thought was a terrific idea:  a place where people could go online and post a petition and if enough people signed the petition within 30 days, the White House would respond. A lot of other people thought it was a terrific idea as well, so much so that the White House has felt compelled to adjust upward the number of signatures required a couple of times.

No, the U.S. will not be building a Death Star. And no, President Barack Obama will not deport CNN's Piers Morgan or let Texas secede.

These are just a few of the wacky notions the White House has been compelled to formally address in recent weeks, part of an effort to put open government into action: the First Amendment right to petition your government, supercharged for the Internet age.

These are just a few of the wacky notions the White House has been compelled to formally address in recent weeks, part of an effort to put open government into action: the First Amendment right to petition your government, supercharged for the Internet age.

Now, as the Obama administration kicks off its second term, it's upping the threshold for responding to Americans' petitions from 25,000 signatures to 100,000, a reminder that government by the people can sometimes have unintended consequences. In this case, a wildly popular transparency initiative has spawned a headache of the administration's own making.

The idea, announced in 2011, was simple: Engage the public on a range of issues by creating an online platform to petition the White House. Any petition garnering 5,000 signatures within 30 days would get an official review and response, the White House said. Dubbed "We the People," the program was touted as an outgrowth of the "unprecedented level of openness in government" Obama vowed to create in a presidential memorandum issued on his first full day in office in 2009.

The response was overwhelming, and a month later, the Obama administration increased the threshold to 25,000 signatures, calling it "a good problem to have." The White House cautioned at the time that it might not be the last time the rules of the program would be changed. ...

Whether the petition initiative and the official responses will, in the long run, be deemed an effective use of White House resources remains to be seen. Another unknown is whether signing the petitions, aside from giving impassioned citizens a chance to be heard, has any effect on how Obama governs. Many petitions call for actions that Congress, not the president, would have to take.

While 5,000 signatures in 30 days may have been a somewhat low figure for this kind of set-up, 25,000 is not.  Sure, there will some silly suggestions (intentional or not), but the White House could have sloughed that off with good humor.  100,000 in 30 days seems impossibly high.  Yes, some issue with currency (the Connecticut Massacre) got that many signatures in just over a day, but if 25,000 people are concerned about an issue, the White House should take a look-see.  Staff can always refer the issue to Congress, if that is the appropriate venue and announce it is doing so, or it can put forth a reason why the issue will not/cannot be addressed.

The White House has taken a good idea, one that attracted a lot of attention, and bent it until it might very well now be broke.

And that's a shame.

By the way, the official site for this is here.