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August 07, 2013 02:00 PM UTC

Hickenlooper: Bring Back The "Smoke-Filled Room?"

  • 22 Comments
  • by: Colorado Pols

THURSDAY UPDATE: Gov. John Hickenlooper walks back clarifies his remarks in today's Denver Post:

"At no point did I suggest that we should embrace back rooms," he said, adding that he was telling the reporter about the ideas proffered by columnist Fareed Zakaria.

"If we're all bemoaning why there is this lockdown and inability to get bills passed or to have government function in Washington, this is a part of it," he said. "I'm not saying we go backwards, … but keep in mind there should be some other way to counterbalance this. I am not saying you go back into secrecy. I'm just pointing out this transparency creates problems. It's hard to argue that's not the case."

Tuesday's Time story that started the hubbub now updated as well:

Updated Wed. Aug. 7, 2013: ”The governor doesn’t support [bringing] back earmarks,” said Hickenlooper Communications Director Eric Brown.

—–

Gov. John Hickenlooper.
Gov. John Hickenlooper.

A fascinating tidbit from Time's Zeke Miller yesterday, reporting from the National Governor's Association conference in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Depending on your point of view, Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper's most memorable quote coming out of this conference is either heroic Hickenlooper frankness or his biggest gaffe since "you can drink fracking fluid." We'll let you decide:

Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper, a potential 2016 democratic candidate for president, has a creative — and controversial — idea for ending Washington, D.C.’s partisan gridlock: start legislating from behind closed doors and bring back the earmark.

After decades of fights for transparency in government, Hickenlooper told TIME that those well-intended initiatives are making government and lawmakers less effective. “We elect these people to make these difficult decisions, but now they are in the full light of video every time they make a decision,” Hickenlooper said at the National Governors Association meeting in Milwaukee, Wis. on Friday.  “We elected these people, let them go back into a room like they always did.” [Pols emphasis]

One Republican governor in attendance endorsed the idea on the condition he not be named. This seemingly counterintuitive opinion — that outcomes would improve if the process is obscured — is catching on in Washington among political elites of both parties as a way of making a dysfunctional Congress work again…

As the theory goes, earmarks and traditional pork-barrel negotiations gave ideological legislators a reason to stay invested in the process of crafting legislation. As anyone following American politics knows, that's a process that has almost totally broken down in recent years, especially the years since 2010 of a GOP-controlled House pitted against a Democratic Senate and White House. Miler of Time makes clear that restoring so-called "earmarks," which were banned by Speaker John Boehner after the GOP retook the House, is not on the agenda anytime soon. But it's a good question: did the "bad old days" of doing business in Washington actually get more done?

Go ahead and debate that while we peel our open government advocate friends off the ceiling.

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22 thoughts on “Hickenlooper: Bring Back The “Smoke-Filled Room?””

    1. But the answer is pretty undeniable. Yes. They got lots more stuff done in the bad old days when the people we elected could get together and make sausage without every move being made in the full glare of "transparency". 

      Today, legislating simply isn't a GOP goal anymore, especially in the House where the only fear is getting primaried by someone even wackier. It's pretty much all performance art now. What else would you call 40 pointless votes to repeal Obamacare?

       And, no, it's not equally the fault of both sides. It's not about polarization if that is meant to mean liberal extremists v conservative extremists. There are damn few true liberals, much less exteme liberals, among the serving Dems and those few don't control the party.  It's the current GOP non-legislating legislators. Just ask Boehner. He's establishment, not Tea Party, and even he is quite clear that legislating isn't their thing and shouldn't be considered the goal.

  2. I hate, hate, hate it when I agree with Hick.  But in this case I do.  I think "transparency" is the worst idea in government ever.  With term limits, balanced redistricting and referendum and initiative, we the people have control over stuff we don't like.  If politicians make deals behind closed doors, who cares?  They are really doing it anyway.  Does anyone remember how Obamacare got passed in the first place.  Deals were made with drug companies, physicians, and individual Senators, all behind closed doors.  Now we just think there is transparency and some unscrupulous people try to take advantage of this tide to make a name for themselves.  What has Cruz really done in his 8 months in Congress.  The answer is nothing, but now we're talking about him for President?   There's a reason why you don't want to see how sausage is made.  Is anyone, anyone happy with the transparency they saw in Obamacare if that CF isn't enough to cure you forever, well, then you don't know anything about how things get done between people with different ideas.

    1. The fundamental issue for me is when the balance of power shifts to the grandstanding blowhards vs. the hardworking legislators that are there to govern, not run for President after 6 months into their first elected position.

      We first saw this nearly 60 years ago with Joe McCarthy and the Army-McCarthy hearings.  Back then Congress had the good sense to eventually reel him in.  Today, the TV-whores nearly outnumber those that take their responsibilities seriously.

  3. Two things you don't want people to see how they're made: laws and sausages. 

    It should have stayed that way. When the camera's on, you have to go out and have to grandstand, lest you look weak. We need to shut off the cameras and let these people be lawmakers again. 

  4. McCarthy's been reincarnated as Ted Cruz. I swear they're related. And who says earmarks are dead? Some of the bills reported on in last Sunday's "Colorado Votes" column in the Denver Post were a regular pig roast, there was so much pork in there. So don't anyone claim Congress isn't bringing home the bacon ( I could probably manage a couple more swinish references if I tried {oh, wait, there was the Cruz thing}).

     

  5. Pols,

    First off, nobody mentioned earmarks and pork barrel but you. Good ol' fashioned horse trading doesn't have involve those (though nobody should be surprised when it does). And these days, some of that horse trading might actually get something done. Go back and watch Charlie Wilson's War to see what I mean.

    As far as transparency in government, I think it's more important to have within the executive branch, when rules and regulations are made. Those who are elected come up for re-election. Those who are hired are difficult to fire and thus need to be transparent.

     

    1. Uhm,

      Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper, a potential 2016 democratic candidate for president, has a creative — and controversial — idea for ending Washington, D.C.’s partisan gridlock: start legislating from behind closed doors and bring back the earmark.

      1. start legislating from behind closed doors and bring back the earmark.

        should I read that as "start making secret decisions and doling out bribes"?

        …with all due respect to the above Polsters, whom I admire, I tend to disagree. Many shenanigans would never be uncovered if powerful people never had to publicly explain themselves. I have been watching the wheels of government grind for a few decades, and I don't think it was better before.

        Governor Hickenlooper is accustomed to doing business in the way he suggests, it appears and has not done him well in the public theatre. I suspect the audience has given him tepid applause and enough catcalls that he fears an encore is questionable.

         but now they are in the full light of video every time they make a decision,

         

        Not really, gov…

        just when they vote and then try to explain it to the public. Or when they start talking about rape…smiley

        1. Not exactly.  Yes we should know why our elected reps vote the way they do in the end. But this is about the horse trading that goes on before anything gets so far as a vote and makes it possible to bring something to a vote that has a snowball's chance in hell of passing both houses and the President's veto pen. That clearly isn't happening anymore what with the wacko dominated GOP being so much more concerned with anti-government posturing for their audience than with cranking out that sausage. 

           What's worse? Some backroom deals to give something to get something or a bunch of  fools screaming "no compromise!" for the cameras and twitter feeds? I'll take the former any old day. 

          1. And then you get this:

            Updated Wed. Aug. 7, 2013: ”The governor doesn’t support brining back earmarks,” said Hickenlooper Communications Director Eric Brown.
             

            My point is just that Hick, as quoted, didn't mention pork or earmarks. Legislators trade votes all the time. That's part of the process. 

            1.  Legislators trade votes all the time. That's part of the process.

              …and often behind closed doors. There are cause and effect questions and questionable equivalencies through out this thread. Perhaps by me.

              I'm a little confused…but I am busy, so I will just let this one go.

  7. The founding fathers wrote the constitution behind closed doors. They all felt that if the process had been open to the press, it would have been impossible to make the compromises required. So our government was founded using this approach.

    My thought is yes this is needed. But record as much of it as possible to release 50 years later.

  9. Guess I'm the only one with Duke hanging on the ceiling. I've seen too much backroom dealing right here in river city to ever want to see it in Washington. We have Craig Meis in the back room with the oil and gas industry and current legislators in the back room with "hot headed gun nuts." I don't see how it serves the people to have industry dictating terms without benefit of public input. Politics is messy, let's keep the sunshine shining on it.

  11. Hick has been a huge disappointment, if not a disaster.  Nice guy, but stands for . . . What, exactly?  Aside from keeping his oil and gas cronies happy, that is . . . 

    1. I notice now that Josh Fox (Gasland) is calling for someone to primary the governor. Welcome aboard, Josh. Talk to Congressman Polis. He may be inclined to give you some support on that.

      Governor Frackenlooper isn't likely to change…he has to be replaced with a Democrat who isn't a member of the Petroleum Club.

       

       

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