The Banality of Open Caucuses

I've been watching President Obama's talk with Senate Democrats out of the corner of my eye this morning. It's nowhere near as entertaining as last week's meeting with the GOP house delegation in Baltimore and, alas, illustrates a rather important point:

Open caucus meetings are essentially useless.

That's basically what's going on this morning: an open caucus. It's been little more than a series of well-choreographed questions from allies on rather important, but noncontroversial, issues and some intra-party cheer-leading. Unless Arlen Specter starts to strangle John Kerry with the mic chord pretty soon this meeting might put me to sleep.

If anyone expects anything deeper than this from an "open" caucus meeting in the state legislature, they're deluding themselves. This is about as "transparent" as it would get. Open caucuses might make certain people feel good about themselves, but there's little practical value to them.

Now, if someone wants to introduce a bill requiring legislatures to file copies of their little black books with GAB -- that would be something we would consider.