This past Saturday I had the chance to facilitate a really interesting meeting in Boston. The event, called the Boston Civic Summit, brought together a diverse group of about 400 activists, civic leaders and average citizens in order to address the concern of declining civic engagement. It was convened by a diverse group of civic leaders and led by the President of the City Council and Executive Director of the city’s convention center.

The day featured an interesting array of activities: remarks from political leaders, workshops on various kinds of leadership development like organizing, communications, fundraising, etc., a keynote address from Tom Sander of the Saguaro Seminar about social capital, and a two and a half hour town meeting that AmericaSpeaks facilitated.

What really stood out for me about the event was the simple fact that it was convened at all. Often people bemoan the state of civic engagement in our communities, but few actually mobilize around the issue as a critical problem. For city leaders, like the president of the city council, to believe it was an important enough issue to dedicate her own political capital to convening a large-scale event is really fantastic.

Despite a tight time schedule, I thought our town meeting went quite well. Together, we developed a vision for the future of civic engagement, identified short- and long-term priorities for reaching that vision, and created Civic Action Teams to follow up on the priority items (among the long-term priorities was to establish the civic summit as a regular event). I’m really interested to see where the process goes in the future. Given the Governor’s stated commitment to civic engagement, I think some really interesting things could be happening in Massachusetts.

To read a bit more about the event, check out the Globe article and an editorial written beforehand.

Form a neighborhood group, vote, and please go to meetings at City Hall.
more stories like this

Those were some of the messages delivered to about 400 activists and neighborhood leaders who gathered yesterday for a conference intended to encourage the public to be more involved in their communities.

“This should have been done a long time ago,” said Harry Nesdekidis, a 53-year-old mechanic from Brighton. “We need to get young people involved. We have to get people united in this city. Don’t cry on the sidelines and expect things are going to change.”

The unusual event, billed as a “civic summit,” was pushed largely by City Council President Maureen Feeney, who wanted to combat the voter apathy displayed in the most recent council election and address a decrease in the number of active community leaders. She has denied speculation that she sponsored the summit - despite an initially lukewarm reception from Mayor Thomas M. Menino - to raise her political profile.

“I am so inspired!” Feeney shouted into the microphone in a meeting hall at the cavernous Boston Convention & Exhibition Center. “Our city is crying out for people just like you.”

Throughout the eight-hour summit, Feeney’s aides walked around, clipboards in hand, walkie-talkies on hips, and Secret Service-like earphones in ears. Participants - wearing name badges that identified them as “delegates” - were issued three-ring binders and tote bags.

Chilled orange juice, s’mores, and roast beef sandwiches were served at various points during the day.

“Raw almonds!” said City Councilor Michael Ross. “They have raw almonds here. Now that’s how you elevate an event.”

Participants took courses with heady titles like “Managing Community Development,” “Raising Resources for Your Organization,” and “Political Awareness, Action, and Voter Education.” They talked about forming online neighborhood networks, beginning a campaign for office, and raising funds for new organizations.

Barely 1 in 10 voters showed up at the polls in the last election, when most city councilors ran unopposed, and there hasn’t been a serious fight for mayor in nearly two decades.

When Feeney first announced the idea in January, Menino said it might not be practical to accomplish much in such a large setting with so many people. The mayor later credited organizers with pulling together a plan with value, and decided to attend.

“Voice your concerns, ask tough questions,” Menino told the crowd in a brief address. “But don’t just say what’s wrong. Work with us to make it right. . . . If we work together, there’s nothing we can’t accomplish.”

Sponsors of the event said they hoped people would form new connections, and figure out ways to improve city services and encourage young residents to get involved.

“If one woman from Charlestown and one man from Dorchester collaborate, that’s success,” said James Rooney, who cochaired the event. “We’re not going to have 13 city councilors give speeches. We could be here until Tuesday.” Still, the legislative delegation from Boston and nearly every city councilor attended the event.

For the last several years, I’ve had the privilege of writing a monthly round-up of news related to the field of ‘deliberative democracy’ - participation as conversation, you might say. All of the recent news about a “food crisis” - which smacks of disingenuousness in the face of years of trade liberalization - got me thinking how public deliberation might play a role informing the policy debates. For that, we need active citizens.

The world’s growing food crisis highlights a modern challenge to democratic governments: participation in relief and development activities. Not only do citizens in many advanced industrialized nations have low levels of knowledge about foreign affairs, the aren’t particularly interested to do something about it. And so modern “disasters” - economically engineered rather than naturally occurring threats to humankind - result in sudden and dramatic changes in the quality of life for millions, if not billions, of people around the world (see commondreams.org’s The World Food Crisis).

Some theorists have argued in the past that deliberation isn’t good for activists, because it forces compromise when what their constituents need are clear victories that deliver the goods. The other side argues that a “win” isn’t sustainable unless it has buy-in from the broader public and a larger constellation of stake-holders. The latest global food crisis - which has precipitated rioting in the streets around the world and engendered political hand-wringing in the North and outrage in the South - surfaces many cross-cutting issues that illustrate the paradoxes of our age. Here are a few worth talking about:

• Agricultural subsidies and tariffs: when we “protect” local productive capacity by stimulating local investments while raising the costs of cheap agricultural imports, are we raising a defense against the shock of spiking food costs?
• Genetically modified foods: Do GMOs offer a way out of the food crisis? Proponents are vehement about the positives while opponents argue for greater local control of crop production.
• U.S. Leadership: The U.N.’s World Food Program faces a budget shortfall of $755million, in part due to declines in U.S. funding as well as its habit of not paying up.
• “Peak oil” and biofuels: One reason for the dramatic spike in food costs has been the growing market for alternative energy sources, namely “biofuels” - is this a devil’s bargain?

These are only a smattering of the issues brought into sharp focus by the latest food “shortage” crisis - and as ever, crystalizes the role an engaged public can play in setting public policy priorities, foreign and domestic.

The Politico ran a nice piece yesterday by Andrew Rasiej and Micah Sifry from Tech President about e-government in the US and the lack of platforms for the public to influence the policy making process. Expecting More from your E-Government starts with a challenge from Steve Clift:

“Isn’t it interesting that the best-designed government websites are those collecting your taxes, while the worst sites are those giving you a say on how your taxes are spent?” asks Steven Clift, a longtime e-democracy advocate.

They look at US e-government and see many applications for filing your ttaxes online and paying parking tickets, but few that ask for your input iin a meaningful way. Then they compare what we see in the US with what is going on elsewhere:

Experiments with more participatory approaches to government are blossoming all over the world. In Estonia, for example, an official website called “Today I Decide,” launched by the government press office, allows citizens to comment on draft laws and submit their own ideas for new ones. If a majority of online voters support a draft bill, it is forwarded to the relevant government department for review. Last fall in New Zealand, the government launched a wiki (a site that anyone can edit) to solicit citizen input on the wording of a new national Policing Act before it was formally introduced in parliament.

Similarly, in France, the Parliament Law Commission recently launched a website seeking the public’s help in simplifying laws to make them more readable and understandable. Two weeks later, more than 80 pages of comments had been submitted and published. French citizens can also participate in an online forum on the parliament’s website to comment on laws currently being considered. (Our friends at the Sunlight Foundation, which we advise, have started a similar effort in the United States, called PublicMarkup.org, around a draft bill on government transparency.)

In England, anyone can submit an e-petition directly on the 10 Downing Street website, and the most popular ones are featured on the site’s home page. More than 7 million people — one in 10 British citizens — have signed one of those petitions since the site’s launch in the fall of 2006. “The next stage is to enable e-petitioners to connect with each other around particular issues and to link up with policy debates both on and off government Web space,” says member Tom Watson, the parliamentary secretary of the Cabinet Office and a leader of the British government’s e-democracy efforts.

Check it out

There are a scant 275 words about Online Deliberation on Wikipedia including the “See also” section and the “External links” section. The final line of the meager three paragraphs reads:

A task force created jointly with the Online Deliberative Democracy Consortiumin June 2005 is expected to make a proposal for next steps in 2006.

Hmmm, wonder if anyone reading or contributing to this blog has anything to add.

The Project on Civic Reflection is hosting a scholarly examination of the meaning and value of reflective discourse. In October, they will bring together 15 scholar-practitioners to examine the nature and significance of reflective discourse in a democracy, with special attention to emerging models that use the arts and humanities to provoke reflection.

As one of the invitees, I have been asked to prepare a 2500 word essay exploring one of the questions below.

Central questions to be addressed

1. How is reflective discourse similar to or different from individual acts of reflection? In what sense can both activities still be called ‘reflection’? What do we mean by ‘reflection’?
2. Can we usefully talk about reflective discourse as something distinct from dialogue or deliberation? What are the differences?
3. What is the role of reflection in a democracy?
4. Can the arts and humanities play a special role in enabling reflection in a democracy? Have they played this role in American democracy?
5. Does the practice of text-based discussion enable reflective discourse in especially useful or valuable ways?

I am thrilled to be included in this project and look forward to contributing to this research. The symposium will produce an anthology of essays, a companion webpage, and of course, connections with other scholar-practitioners. I welcome your thoughts about the above questions. See the complete symposium overview here.

The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. made a wide range of political, social, and intellectual contributions to American life, but in the popular imagination, he is remembered most for his dream of a society that has moved beyond race. In the forty years since his death, we have tried to judge people “not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.” We have been striving toward a society where racism is easily identified and quickly purged, where there is a level playing field for everyone, where we barely notice the racial and cultural differences between us.

The last fifteen years have witnessed an explosion of local projects and programs in which ordinary citizens get together to talk about, and do something about, race and racism. These efforts have brought about a wide range of tangible outcomes and policy changes. But they have also led to some unexpected conclusions: it turns out that when people sit down to talk candidly about issues of race, they begin questioning some of the key assumptions of King’s vision. Instead of a colorblind society, they describe a culture where racial and cultural differences play a more prominent, productive, and challenging role than ever before. If these dialogues are any indication, race is here to stay.

This is a disturbing conclusion for those who believe that we have already realized King’s dream – that racism is already a thing of the past. It can also be unsettling for those who think racism is alive and well. Senator Barack Obama had to confront these contrasting viewpoints in his major speech on race last month. Obama disavowed the inflammatory remarks of his former pastor, but he also described racism as a continuing challenge, a still-imposing obstacle in our “path to a more perfect union.”

Much of the local public engagement work began in the early 1990s, when the Rodney King and O. J. Simpson cases created a mandate for public dialogue on race. Elected officials and other local leaders realized that, while they might address race-related issues through their work in areas like economic development or housing discrimination, they also had to deal directly with the race-related perceptions, biases, and beliefs of their constituents. This kind of public outreach had rarely been done before; most communities lacked venues for people of diverse backgrounds to talk to each other about race.

By involving people in discussions of race, local leaders hoped they could overcome community divisions and prevent public debates from being dominated by extreme voices. A wave of local public engagement efforts swept the nation, involving hundreds and sometimes thousands of people in forums, trainings, workshops, and small-group dialogues. Many local leaders became experts on how to recruit citizens and set up productive meetings; in this way, race has helped propel a new wave of democratic experiments, transforming the citizen-government relationship on many different issues.

In most cases, these projects have been successful at easing racial tensions, changing local policies, and inspiring people of different backgrounds to work together. But in these discussions, participants tend to challenge three traditional assumptions about race:
1. They question the notion that racism is just an easily identifiable, individual sin – that we are all either racists or non-racists. When people take a closer look, they usually begin to see racism as a blurry spectrum, a series of individual and institutional biases that get progressively more inaccurate and damaging. Rodney King’s question, “Can’t we all just get along?,” was a basic plea for tolerance, but once citizens begin to talk about race, they usually go much farther than that, addressing complex issues of institutional racism as well as simpler forms of prejudice.
2. People examine the belief that we should learn to tolerate, compensate for, and eventually ignore the cultural differences between us. Citizens cherish their cultures and traditions, and want to hold on to them. As they begin to recognize just how diverse their communities are, they often acknowledge that these differences will probably always affect how people interact with each other. Diversity is both a strength and a challenge: sometimes you celebrate diversity, sometimes you have to deal with it, but the challenge is how to do those things effectively, not how you can make differences disappear.
3. People test the assumption that a “level playing field,” where every individual has a uniform opportunity at happiness and success, is the best outcome we can hope for. In its place, their actions seem to suggest a field where the players are equal but different, and the focus is on helping them work together.

So race has emerged, more explicitly than ever, as an enduring public priority like education or poverty. Local officials are one barometer for this change. “At the local level, we understand the critical role of race,” says Charlie Lyons, a selectman from Arlington, Massachusetts. “We deal with race every single day, in almost every aspect of our work.” Jim Hunt, a Clarksburg (W.V.) city councilman, draws a connection between our ability to address race and our ability to address other kinds of divisions. “If we can get better at dealing with difference, we can tap into more of the strengths and assets of our communities.” (Both officials have served as president of the National League of Cities.) Cultural difference is being recognized as both a positive and a negative, as a core consideration in problem-solving and local governance.

If the presidential campaign is any indication, the dynamics of the race issue may change at the federal level as well. But this may require a new vision of racial progress, a dream based on the reality of local discussions on race and difference. We are not striving for a homogeneous, colorless future, but a diverse, candid, cooperative culture.

I just read about an interesting report from Yale and the University of Northern Iowa that demonstrates how a little social pressure can significantly increase electoral participation. Basically, the researchers sent out postcards to voters that shared their household’s previous turnout rate, as well as the turnout rates of their neighbors. The result was an increase in turnout of 27%.

Check out a write up of the experiment at Open Left here.

I’m not sure what the implications are for those of us who organize public deliberations, but it feels like there should be an important lesson here about using inexpensive methods to get the attention and the sense of civic duty of citizens.

[From the March eBulletin] This week Bhutan voters delivered their first election victory to ex-premier Jigmi Y Thinley, who’s Druk Phuensum Tshogpa (DPT) party won 45 of 47 seats in an election that saw an 80-percent voter turn-out rate in a country of 700,000 mostly rural inhabitants. The higher voter turn out put to rest some early Western observers’ skepticism toward democratization in the tiny Buddhist kingdom (http://www.economist.com/world/asia/displaystory.cfm?story_id=9084732). The winning DPT party is loyal to the nation’s 28 year-old King Wangchuck, who inherited the pro-democratic legacy established by his father in 2006 (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/5360522.stm).

The election - and the broad move to initiate democratic reforms that will make it the world’s youngest constitutional monarchy - signals an expansion of democracy in a region where it has also floundered: Bhutan is tucked between the world’s most populous democracy (India) and arguably the world mightiest economy (China) and neighbors Nepal (which has a strong anti-monarchist movement that has erupted in violence in the past) and Tibet, which has experienced troubled relations with China over the years.

More immediately, some observers are concerned about the implications of the results: “There were no striking differences between the platforms of the two parties, making the vastly uneven results hard to explain,” the New York Times reports (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/25/world/asia/25bhutan.html). “We are all caught completely off balance at this moment,” said Karma Ura, director of the Center for Bhutan Studies, a government-financed organization, speaking by telephone with the Times from Thimphu, the capital. “Functioning of democracy requires a good opposition. I don’t know what will happen now. It’s not an ideal situation.”

In his first press conference as Bhuttan’s first Prime Minister, Thinley said observers can expect to see, “a government that is not bigger than what it is now. You’ll see a government that will be very transparent, very accessible to the media, and that will put in place various ways and means to make itself accountable to the people at regular intervals.”

“By people,” Thinley continued, “I’m talking about right down to the constituency level. It’ll be a government that’s sensitive and responsive to the needs of the people and one that is going to be very unforgiving when it comes to corruption.”

Perhaps this is an exciting opportunity for deliberative democrats to support nascent efforts to create such regular accountability structures in a largely rural, multiethnic state. We can certainly expect to see neighboring India offering assistance drawn from its own evolving modes of local and national governance.

I attended the E-Democracy Bar Camp here in DC today.

One interesting session in this “unconference” was run by Tom Steinberg, the founder of My Society, that asked participants to consider what kinds of things a new president could do in the first few days in office that could make a significant difference. Tom’s basic point was that we focus too much on major policy reforms when many small things can be done by a new leader that can make a significant difference.

On the E-Democracy front, Tom encouraged participants to think about the most basic things that we assume should be on our own web sites that are not available on White House.org. For example, why is there no significant effort to collect people’s email addresses (a sign-up field)? Why does the president not have a weekly or monthly e-newsletter that is sent out to the public (let alone a blog)? It seems so obvious and basic. The president does a weekly radio address, why wouldn’t he want an opportunity to send our regular messages via email? And why wouldn’t agency secretaries want to do the same thing?

Cynthia Farrar has been doing some great work in partnership with the New York Times, called Purple States, in which she has been working with a diverse group of citizens to personally report on their experience of the 2008 election.

Cynthia just sent around an email that the next Purple States episode, “Security and the War” is us up on the nytimes.com/opinion web site. You can also view it by checking out this link: http://purplestates.tv/nytimes - that is the nyt “purple states” page - you can watch all of their videos there.

At www.purplestates.tv this week, they are launching a new “video conversations” feature. “The citizens really want to answer questions and receive input about their experience,” wrote Cynthia. “As you see from this week’s episode, not everybody can talk to Centcom, and McCain, and Giuliani, and Iraq Veterans for Peace - but the Purple States citizens have. If you have questions about the war, ask them.”

Are you tired of the same old politics? So are we.

And so are millions of other Americans, who, polls show, are frustrated by campaigns and politics dominated by mudslinging, sound bites, money, and polarizing partisanship.

But the answer isn’t to walk away. More participation is.

We need to put people back into politics. And we need to start now.

The good news is that there’s a new national coalition focused on doing just that. It’s called the November 5th Coalition, named to send the message that politics and civic engagement isn’t just about election. It’s about what happens after and between elections. It’s about creating what we’re calling a new civic politics—one that truly believes in government of the people, by the people, and for the people.

Members of the November 5th Coalition—an all-partisan, grassroots effort—include groups as diverse at the National Civic League, American Association of State Colleges and Universities’ American Democracy Project, Mobilize.org, the Association of Young Americans, and NCDD….

Our Declaration is endorsed by a network of citizens, including former governors William Winter (D-Miss.) and Al Quie (R-Minn.), former civil rights leader Dorothy Cotton, former USA Freedom Corps director John Bridgeland, former HUD Secretary Henry Cisneros, and many others.

Already, this group is challenging candidates to rise above needless polarization and talk about how they’ll work with all of us, as fellow citizens, to address difficult problems from health care to education reform, from climate change to keeping communities safe.

But we’re doing a lot more. And we need your help—and the help of all those who believe politics shouldn’t be a spectator sport.

What can you do? Here’s a few suggestions:

Push out our message of “citizen politics” by writing a letter to the editor, posting a comment on a blog, or calling in to a radio show.

We believe that we have the momentum, the opportunity, and the power to help make “we the people” the architects and agents of a new democracy. And we hope you’ll join us.

Sincerely,

Harry Boyte, Elaine Eschenbacher, and Nan Skelton, Center for Democracy and Citizenship, University of Minnesota’s Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs
Maya Enista, Mobilize.org
Will Friedman & Alison Kadlec, Center for Advances in Civic Engagement, Public Agenda
Archon Fung, Harvard University
Chris Gates, Philanthropy for Active Civic Engagement
Cynthia Gibson, Principal, Cynthesis Consulting/Tisch College of Public Service & Citizenship, Tufts University
Joe Goldman, AmericaSpeaks
Elizabeth Hollander, Tisch College of Public Service & Citizenship, Tufts University
Sandy Heierbacher, National Coalition for Dialogue and Deliberation
Matt Leighninger, Deliberative Democracy Consortium
Peter Levine, CIRCLE (The Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement)
Martha McCoy, Study Circles Resource Center
George Mehaffy, American Democracy Project, AASCU
Carmen Sirianni, Brandeis University
Mica Stark, Saint Anselm College
Max Stephenson, Virginia Tech Center for Policy & Governance

Three colleagues and I have finished the first draft of a chapter on how to measure the degree to which a small group has deliberated. It will appear in late 2008 in the Sourcebook of Political Communication Research: Methods, Measures, and Analytical Techniques, edited by Lance Holbert and to be published by Routledge.

The paper is attached, and we would be delighted to hear back any comments, suggestions for revisions or additions, and so on. In particular, if you have used a particular technique to measure deliberation (quantitatively or qualitatively), we’d love to take a look at it and reference it in the chapter. (I assume it’s probably unpublished, since we didn’t find it…but one never knows, and we don’t care whether it’s appeared in print before. We just want to see measures that work, or should have worked but didn’t.)

The chapter is available for your review at http://faculty.washington.edu/jgastil/MeasuringDelib.pdf. If you wish to comment on it here, in the blog, please do so. Otherwise, email your comments directly to the first author, Laura Black (blackl1@ohio.edu).

Cheers,

John

Julie Fanselow at Study Circles/Everyday Democracy just sent along this note:

We are pleased to announce the kickoff of our Everyday Democracy Book Club. Join our special guest Frances Moore Lappé as she discusses her new book, Getting a Grip: Clarity, Creativity, and Courage in a World Gone Mad.

The event will take place from 1 to 2 p.m. Eastern Time THIS Thursday, January 17, right on our blog at Democracy Space. All you have to do to take part is surf over to Democracy Space at the appointed time. Questions for Frances can be emailed in advance to jfanselow@studycircles.org, or they will be taken “from the floor” as time permits.

I don’t know what heaven is like, but I know it has changed recently. John Parr, mentor, colleague and friend, recently entered; much too early as they say. Remembrances of John as well as of Sandy, his wife, and Chase, his daughter have been circulating on the internet, our town square for dispersed communities. John, one of my colleagues, said he was one of the nicest persons he ever knew. That refrain has been common. So too was the observation that Denver and Colorado are better places because of John’s leadership and passion; because of his sense of how to bring people together — powerful people and ordinary citizens – to find the common good.

Whether it was electing a mayor, raising $10 billion for a new transit system, or guiding a consensus building process on topics from wellness to climate change, John was bringing people together in spaces – where they often found their best selves – and together were able to forge a new path. When all too many of his consensus building colleagues were focused on agreements and plans, John focused on results; Civic Results was the name of his firm.

It helped that John was an incurable insomniac. When I stayed at his cabin, the former saloon of Baltimore, Colorado, I found that no matter how early I awoke, John had been up for hours, having added numerous items to his massive to-do lists, as he kept track of dozens of projects.

Every project was important. Many colleagues reported that their last conversation with John was about gathering information on colleges to ensure that Katie, his youngest daughter, found just the right place. His mentees at Eastside High School were also important projects. He tells the story of the first student he mentored, who, when he first met John, wondered whether this bearded, somewhat professorial white guy had any street cred. John learned that his new mentee often did not make it to school on time and promised to pick him up and drive him to school. Instead of taking the family Subaru, John fired up the old Porsche that Sandy bought him for his 50th and picked up his new mentee, instant cred. That tireless creative spirit drove countless other projects – all equally important – whether it was helping the new governor or the new mentee.

So imagine, a new, insomniac angel entering heaven, one who’s used to democratizing the process everywhere he goes, a person who is used to making change happen – good change – wherever he goes. Imagine heaven, a place where gentle, all-knowing, autocratic leadership has dominated since the beginning of time. We have an indomitable force meeting an immovable power structure. My bet is that St. Peter has a new counselor, and a new, more inclusive, more democratic heaven is in the works. Who says nice guys finish last?

Thanks to Pete Peterson at Common Sense California for passing along this op-ed by Dave Davenport that was published last week in the San Francisco Chronicle. An excerpt from the article:

We think hybrid vehicles are new but, in fact, the American founders built one more than 200 years ago: our democratic republic. Although we often speak of American “democracy,” Benjamin Franklin correctly described our system of government as a “republic,” acknowledging our long-term challenge by adding, “If you can keep it.” Just as hybrid vehicles are fueled by both electricity and gasoline, our government runs on both the democratic energy of the people and the filtering judgment of elected representatives.

Increasingly we hear that this vehicle is breaking down, that the great American experiment of self-governance, as the 18th century French journalist Alexis de Tocqueville admiringly described it, is on the verge of failure. University of Virginia politics Professor Larry Sabato, for example, recently called for a new constitutional convention, suggesting 23 major revisions to our founding document, proposing nothing less than an extreme makeover for a system he argues is antiquated and badly in need of reform. Another professor’s plea for radical reconstruction is entitled “Our Undemocratic Constitution.”

But rather than an entirely new vehicle, what our democratic republic needs are renewed sources of energy - especially informed citizen engagement - as well as improved filtering devices to supplement political parties, labor unions and some traditional civic associations that are no longer adequate to the task. Until we re-engage the people’s participation in fulfilling their civic responsibilities, not just enjoying their constitutional rights, this government will be underpowered and off course.