Congressman Gil Gutknecht got schooled by a ninth-grade civics student

I enjoy covering politics for The Newspaper - which employs me - because the only place for politicians to visit in the town I cover is our local schools. This brings me great joy, because when most politicians visit schools, they come in assuming today's kids are stupid and don't care about politics, because that's what the polls and voting statistics tell them. Then I wait anxiously, in hopes that the politician will get proved horribly, horribly wrong. Usually, they are. Last Friday, the politician was shown up in a particularly cruel manner.

Congressman Gil Gutknecht, a Republican, represents most of Southern Minnesota. I had no problem with the guy before his visit to my coverage area. He's a nice guy, and seems to do an okay job. However, my respect for him disappeared when he announced to the ninth-grade civics class he was visiting that "Republicans think people should be responsible for themselves, while Democrats think people should be responsible for everybody else." Nice one, Gil. It's good to see you're willing to take time out of teaching kids about your job to take cheap shots against the opposing political party.

I was a little angry about Gutknecht's misleading and cleverly-phrased comment, and apparently, so were a few students in the class. I saw quite a few eyes rolling after his comment. So later, when Gutknecht talked about working on the House Budget Committee, one student sent a whopper of a question at him. Perhaps it's just better if I recount the discussion, so you can see for yourself how Gutknecht left himself wide open for this question, and ended up looking like a dumbass.

Gutknecht: You know how one of your parents is usually more likely than the other parent to say yes when you want something? So you always ask that parent, right? Well, on the budget committee, we're kind of like the parent you don't want to ask. Our job is to say no, and keep spending down. After 9/11, there was a lot of spending that went on under the label of national security, but a lot of it had nothing to do with security. So that's what we're working on now, so we can keep spending down.

Student: So why did you let them spend all that money, then?

Gutknecht: Um, heh heh. (Laughs and jokingly asks his assistant if he'd like to answer the question for him. Laughs again). Well, we wanted to make sure the country was secure, so we let a lot of it through. People wanted our country to be as secure as it could be, so we tried to make it secure.

Student: Yeah, but why did you allow them to increase our deficit so much? If you knew it wasn't for security, and stuff, why didn't you say no?

Gutknecht: Well, we're working on it now. And the economy keeps getting better. It's gone up by eight percent over the last . . . (He then rants for a long time about the "great" economy - which still isn't as good as it was when Clinton left office - to get out of answering the question).

Ohhhhh man, it was beautiful. If I ever have a daughter, I want her to be just like that girl. Gutknecht thought the kids were stupid, and assumed they wouldn't realize the high spending he's "working hard to keep down" is there because he didn't do his job in the first place. The girl called Gutknecht on it, and he ended up looking like a complete ass.

Sadly, if a reporter asked the same questions that girl did, conservatives would claim the reporter was biased, and start whining about "That Damn Liberal Media". But those questions had no liberal bias. They were honest questions about a subject that needs to be questioned: why did congressmen and senators allow all that irresponsible spending after 9/11, when they knew it was for items that wouldn't make our country any safer against terrorist attacks? It's not liberal bias, it's holding politicians responsible for their mistakes. Unfortunately, this false idea of the media being liberal in its news coverage has sunk into the psyche of Americans, and it's made news coverage worse, while making things easy for politicians.

In order to keep our politicians in line, regular citizens need to ask the tough questions that reporters aren't allowed to. Gutknecht getting schooled by a ninth-grader is a perfect example of this. Her excellent and well-educated questions rattled him, and if other citizens do their part when politicians come to their town, politicians might be forced to do things right, for fear of being called on their mistakes.

I wish people had put a scare in Gutknecht and other budget committee politicians when the overspending started. If that had happened, our deficit might not have skyrocketed so much. Unlike reporters, citizens don't have editors or paying customers forcing them to ask non-controversial questions, and people should make the most of their opportunities to put politicians on the spot.

Our country is the greatest country in the world, with one catch: in order for our government to run smoothly, citizens need to hold elected officials responsible when the job isn't done right. Let's hope the verbal and political ass whooping handed to Gutknecht is the beginning of a new trend.

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