The administration only responds to trivial petitions or petitions that already side with their policy. Typical. Obama claims that his is the "Most transparent administration ever"
You could actually argue that handling of these petitions is very transparent: petition text goes in, petition text comes out, and there's a null transform in the middle.
My favorite petition came right after a few of the early responses, titled "We demand a vapid, condescending, meaningless, politically safe response to this petition."
Can you really blame the guy for being politically safe? I know it sucks but it is a war of inches.
Things change with the backing of the people. The Republicans know this well and uses that reaction. They are fundamentally populist (whether you agree with them or not, they have skill here).
Absolute justice gives way to a triage. Fundamentally with out that triage nothing gets treated. It is an unfortunate reality.
It will only change, if how we work is rethought. These are the scope of the actions available in our game. The pattern has been replicated consistently through similar models in history.
It could very easily become robbing Peter to pay Paul.
*edit
Getting downvote....sigh.... I realize it is an unpopular opinion but it is a consistent pattern for republics through out human history. Please offer me a counter example to facilitate debate if you disagree.
i disagree. for one thing, he's in his 2nd term, there is no 'war of inches' to lose. when he has a political agenda, nothing stops him from shoving it through no matter what. for stuff he cares two licks about but knows his voters care about, he just retorts 'the republicans wont let me'.
He already has; odds are that he has sunk any chances of a Democratic presidential victory in 2016. A significant portion of the base that rallied for his presidency two terms in a row are disillusioned with the government they got.
This is actually a perfect microcosm of the subject in question :-)
Knowing the community and how they feel about these hot button issues I gain no reputation by making a point against the grain. In fact I have lost reputation...
Hahaha... If I had took my own advice and applied more PR(triage) or acted as a populist. Then would I not have gained votes instead of lost? Even if the position was invalid or it was not what I believed?
This is precisely the deficit that has held back democratic culture for centuries. It is our greatest weakness.
Subscribe to the Org For Action mailing list and receive a few of those, and you'll see how fruitless that argument really is.
Yes, the president should stay somewhat politically neutral, lest he alienate roughly half of the population. That doesn't mean the responses can't be neutral.
Considering the emails that from from the president, his wife, and his supporters are routinely filled with provocative, if not downright incendiary statements, it's kind of silly that his responses (where applicable) are so entirely vapid on whitehouse.gov.
I am not advocating neutrality. I am advocating avoiding snares.
Policy change is fundamentally dependant on the organization of the people. It is that organization that makes it a political reality.
A Presidents ability is constrained by this dynamic and it is a good thing! It keeps power in check.
The people enable absolute justice not the President. They are the arbitrators of liberty.
Whether you agree with the institutions actions or not there is a greater balance to be struck.
* edit
I am concerned I did not address your point on vapid responses enough.
I just think it is a constant political liability and it would be better off if every senator, party, legislator ..etc could reply to the question. Then the people could get behind an idea to make it a political reality.
* edit 2
Also checked out Org For Action. I would guess that perhaps it is a different audience and it is not using the Presidential position? I do see your point. Perhaps it is simply different chains of command and therefore policy?
I think the criticism that they don't normally respond to petitions is valid so I don't really want to point this out but they did respond to the petition to allow cellphone unlocking and that has affected change. Of course, the petition wasn't the only cause of the change.
That's actually really interesting. The cynic in me wants to say "well, it was happening anyhow, so they capitalized on it", but I wonder how much of an impact that petition actually had.
It is the type of thing a politician gets irritated too by and it isn't really controversial from the voters point of view, so it gets done.
In the EU the politicians at EU level pushed through max roaming charges for SMS messages, whilst leaving data roaming rates ludicrously high. My take on it was that the politicians weren't using data so they only dealt with what was painful for them on an individual level.
http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/283335-obam...
Journalists loudly disagree:
http://gazette.com/journalists-criticize-white-house-for-sec...