Victoria Taft, KPAM 860AM Radio’s evening drive-time Talk Show Host, has been encouraging listeners to attend Town Halls that she anticipates Members of Congress from the Portland (OR) Area will be holding during the current August Recess. With that in mind, during her interview* yesterday with the current Member of Congress from Washington’s 3^rd Congressional District, Brian Baird, Victoria asked Baird about his plans for Town Halls during this critical time. Baird’s responses revealed a great deal about what I have termed “Brian Baird’s Stealth Town Halls.”

Before going on, let me tell you a bit about my own personal experience with this. Since I live in Washington’s 3^rd Congressional District and I don’t feel my views are being well represented in Congress, I’ve been most interested in having an opportunity to have dialog with the one charged with the responsibility of being my Representative. In pursuing this, I’ve visited Brian Baird’s Website. I was, initially, encouraged to see Town Halls prominently displayed. In fact, on the Website, Baird boasts of having held hundreds of Town Halls during his over-a-decade tenure as a U.S. Congressman ... something he, also, pointed to in yesterday’s interview with Taft. However, my personal experience in trying to engage with Baird, via his Town Halls, has been quite discouraging. Although I've made multiple requests of Baird's Vancouver office to be on their phone and email notification list, I've never received a single notification. Typically, I'll hear about a Baird Town Hall, after the fact, through "the grapevine". When I check Baird's Website for it, there is no prior posting of the event, only an after-the-fact notice of where and when it took place … typically during the working day, at a high school gym or other similar venue. No doubt, Baird would cite my experience as being some rare anomaly in his forthright attempt to fully engage with all his constituents. I’m comfortable leaving it up to you to judge whether or not my experience seems like just a coincidence.

Victoria Taft’s first question, during yesterday’s radio interview with Baird, was to ask if he was scheduling Town Halls during the current August Recess. It struck me that Baird’s response was typical of a Career Politician … he didn’t directly answer the question. Instead, he first said something about scheduling a number of (closed) “forums” with various groups involved with the health care industry. Then he talked about how he has changed to conducting Telephone Town Halls. According to Baird, this allows him to engage with as many as 4,000 callers in an hour. And, he went on to say that there was no screening involved, that it includes him hearing from callers who don’t fully agree with him, etc. I have to admit, considering the logistics of this baffles me and I’ve been selling technology-based business-to-business systems-solutions since the mid 1970s. If attendees are connected via outbound calls, what determines who gets called, how would they expect to be called and how would they be prepared for the event? If they’re folks who have requested to be called, why the coincidence that I haven’t been included? If attendees are connected via inbound calls, how do they know about the event in advance and how do they know what phone number to call? Again, if these are folks who have requested to be involved, why the coincidence that I haven’t been included? And, who in their right mind, believes that one person, even a Career Politician, can engage in discussion with 4,000 callers in an hour? I wish Victoria had pressed Baird on this but she didn’t. However, she did confront him with making it possible for the media to participate in these events. Baird said it would take some arranging but that it could be done. I certainly plan to stay tuned to see if that happens.

Of course, Town Halls was not the only topic on Taft’s agenda in interviewing Baird. They, also, covered health care, strengthening our borders, energy independence, global warming, etc. By the way, if you haven’t read Lew Waters’ excellent article, entitled “Brian ‘Big Brother’ Baird”, regarding Baird’s views on energy, I highly recommend that you do so. Anyway, in the final hour of her show, Victoria reviewed her conversation with Baird and added related comments. One comment was that though “Baird seems to be a nice enough guy”, she questions how well he’s representing Washington’s 3^rd Congressional District. And, she went on to say that she believes he’s being disingenuous about not having his mind made up about his vote on the health care bill currently before congress. Her view is that he does know how he’s going to vote … he’s going to vote the way the Obama/Reed/Pelosi administration wants him to vote.

I, too, have some observations about Taft’s interview of Baird, in reflecting on it. Although I’ve never met Brian Baird, I agree with Ms. Taft … he seems to be a nice enough guy. And there’s no denying, he “shows” well … after over 10 years as a Career Politician in Congress, he can speak coherently on many topics. Sadly, I also agree that he doesn’t seem to be completely truthful. As an example, when Victoria asked him about the for-or-against indications of phone calls coming into his office on health care, Baird’s answer was “mixed”. According to the Wall Street Journal this past week, a poll on the health care bill shows that 42% of those polled think it’s a bad idea, while 36% think it’s a good idea. That, too, is “mixed” but reporting it as such would be less than forthright. Of course, my most significant agreement with Victoria Taft on Baird is with her questioning how well he’s representing the Congressional District I live in. For me, the greatest evidence of this, in Baird’s interview with Victoria Taft, is that, while he talked about Town Halls and he talked about his views on all the topics I noted above, NOT ONCE did I hear him talk about how his constituents view those topics and what their wishes are. Isn’t learning that what Baird should be using his Town Halls to accomplish – i.e., gaining the knowledge necessary to be Representative of his constituents?! Perhaps Baird just uses his Town Halls to sell his “superior” partisan views. I don’t know … attending one of these grand events has never been made available to me.

*It turns out that, yesterday, Victoria Taft broadcast Part One of her interview with Brian Baird. Part Two is scheduled to be broadcast on Monday. You can bet I’m planning to tune in to Victoria during drive time on Monday!