It's been over a month since the Obama administration launched their online petition program, "We The People," and the responses are finally starting to roll in. When we last checked in, petitions for legalizing pot and banning the TSA were leading the way. So clearly, the Obama administration will see the overwhelming response and everyone will be smoking doobies in unsecured airports, right? Well, not so much.
As of right now, the site has features five responses to different petitions, four of which resulted in an unequivocal "No." When considering the legalization of marijuana, the administration gave a pretty boilerplate response on why legalization wouldn't happen. Similar responses were given for removing "God" references from coins and the pledge of allegiance, implementing a flat tax, and investigating the cast of Sholom Rubashkin. The only positive response given so far has been for forgiving student loan debt - a petition with substantially fewer votes than the others receiving responses.
So, if the Obama administration doesn't plan to actually implement the most popular petitions, what's the point? It's probably good to have an "official administration stance" on these clearly popular issues, but when you're forced to look non-responsive to citizens' concerns, I can't imagine the net public relations gain is positive. I was initially excited about the potential for "We The People" to give a way for the Obama Administration to justify policies with high public support but low political capital. Instead, it looks like another giant waste of time.
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