Thoughts on Twittergate

Anyone who’s worked for Congress has stories about the goofy and sometimes contradictory rules imposed by the various ethics committees and rules. These rules are almost universally outdated, a result of governing bodies that have the unenviable role of policing themselves, and inertia is a powerful force in keeping things from being changed.

The latest casualty of these archaic rules is the twitter feed of Representative John Culberson, a Republican(?!). Culbertson won some notoriety as he suggested that a letter sent by the Committee on House Administration (pdf) implied that,

They want to require prior approval of all posts to any public social media/internet/www site by any member of Congress!!!

Now, while few Members of Congress generally express themselves with three exclamation points, this is really his Twitter feed – in his capacity as “Most Connected Congressman,” Culbertson uses an impressive array of interactive web tools, to communicate (h/t for most of the info in the previous paragraphs to Personal Democracy Forum and the Sunlight Foundation, who’ve been providing continuing coverage of this issue).

For my part, I think that it’s time we modernized the rules that govern Congressional use of the internet, for reasons I’ll go into below the fold…

First, let’s all acknowledge that there’s good reason to have some rules. Without any guidelines, Members would be able to use their official office as a way to provide significant resources to their campaigns, giving them unfair advantages over challengers who don’t have a whole staff of online content creators that they don’t need to pay out of their campaign funds.

But these guidelines should be created by a body that’s more nimble and has less conflict of interest in the process of getting Members of Congress elected. A small group of commissioners who could make rulings on an individual or site-by-site basis could quickly form a sort of case law that would allow officeholders to make greater use of technology without running afoul of ethics rules.

But why should we care if Congress can twitter, or post videos on YouTube or update their Facebook pages from their Federal office? Partially because there’s something to be said about the people who regulate the internet knowing how to use it, just as there’s something to be said for umpires having played Baseball. A legislator who wants to promote net neutrality has a lot more credibility if he can really understand why putting video in the slow lane would cause problems for our Democracy. And just as every member needs the obligatory picture of him or herself with a tractor to show they understand farmers and in a hard hat to show they understand construction, maybe it’s worth seeing them comment on a blog post to show that they understand the world of an increasingly technologically sophisticated workforce.

Congress will never be made up of early adopters. I would bet that we wouldn’t find ten iPhones in the pockets of Senators, and it shows every time a septuagenarian Republican opens his mouth to discuss technology (see here and here). Similarly, the draft Congressional Management Foundation report shows that many Members’ offices have a backwards approach to email that treats it as a second-class communication.But Congress’s telecommunications policies on net neutrality and rollout of higher speed broadband would likely be more progressive if they had a bigger stake in the issue.

In the end, though, it may be just as simple as what the Sunlight Foundation is arguing – that the most important reason for allowing members to make free use of interactive web tools to communicate is that we’re a stronger democracy with more communication. If Members of Congress want to use new technology to speak to their constituents in new ways, I say more power to them. And because I’m not a Congressman, I can even say it on Twitter.

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