“Consistency requires you to be as ignorant today as you were a year ago.” — Bernard Berenson

Most people change their minds all the time; from their weekend plans, to their dinner choices, to what kind of clothes to wear out of their house. Assuming you are an intelligent civic minded individual, when it comes to political issues, you weigh this against that, you decide based on your best information, and you align them with your own values.

Over time, however, values change, more information comes in, biases develop, and you change your mind.

If you want a go a step further, sometimes I can both like and dislike something, at the same time. Example: should cops have guns? Sometimes yes, sometimes no. It depends.

A flexible mind is healthy; it shows an ability to be resourceful and thoughtful. For me, it reflects what I want in my politicians.

Unfortunately, modern politicians only believe in consistency.

When an average person is confronted with an issue they’ve thought about and changed their minds on, they admit the disconnect and describe the journey they took to determine the view they have. A politician, on the other hand, will deny ever having any opposing view, as if they left the womb with a set of political directives. The denial is so extreme that even if they are on tape, they deny ever having said that; that’s not me, I would never say something something like that, so therefore that’s not me on that video tape.

It’s really unfortunate; this kind of obstruction destroys the organic debates we should be having.

If we really want to overhaul the media talking heads programs this is what we should do:

1. Every commercial break is spent by a team of fact-checkers to determine the veracity of what was said prior to the break.
2. If something was said that is suspect, the program stops and all the attention is given to the one person who lied. There will be no moving on to another topic until it’s resolved. It takes as long as it takes. Period. If the talking head has to go, walks out, whatever, the program airs footage of what he or she said, and the moderator will continue to scrutinize the lie with the help of the fact-checkers until there is a satisfactory conclusion the lie has been debunked.
3. Facts cannot be debated; you can’t say the economy was fine in hypothetical year 1984, when it wasn’t. It’s the moderator’s job, with the help of the fact-checkers, to say, no that’s not true and not move on from that position. There will be no “leaving it there”.
4. What I learned from CSI: Cite your source. Made up statistics will not wash.
5. Show lots of visual aids and infographics to make complicated issues easy to understand. Post it on the web. Moreover, there will be no news crawl at the bottom of the screen while this program airs. We want your undivided attention.
6. Every speech, every law, every proposition will be linked on the program’s website so civic minded individuals don’t have to hunt for the information and can read the original language for themselves.
7. No infotainment. There are plenty of other programs for that; if you want to be taken seriously, you have to act accordingly. So no bringing up Charlie Sheen, Britney Spears, or what Justin Bieber is doing.
8. Get people excited about government again; optimism is crucial, trust is vital. Online forms on how you would make the system better. If there is merit, use the website as a platform to begin grassroots changes.
9. Trolls and mud-slinging will be blocked. We are serious about changing things and the way you do that is you only allow intelligent dialogue. View it as a driving privilege, everyone has the right to the privilege, but if you act like an idiot, the privilege is taken away from you. A star system will reward online commentators of particular insight and thus become online civic leaders.
10. These rules will appear at the beginning of every broadcast; the need to determine the truth should always supercede the moderator or the show’s left or right leanings.

Regardless, wouldn’t it be great to have a debate that was so successful someone’s mind was changed? That’s what our collective national goal should be.