Legislative Agenda

In the small U.S. municipality of Agenda, Wisconsin, the town council has an agenda... Every time they meet... Across Lake Superior in Ontario, Canada, "The Agenda" is a current affairs TV show. Scotland & New Zealand have shows in the same vein with the same name.

So how did a simple list of points to be discussed, schedule of activities or goals to be accomplished become such a terrible thing in the context of American political rhetoric?

Guilt by association and repetition.

The very meaning of agenda has been distorted and corrupted into something pejorative by conservative politicians and media who use "agenda" in harsh tones to condemn a "radical liberal agenda," "judicial activist agenda" or (worst of all) the "homosexual agenda."

Voters have been primed to despise whoever has an agenda.

Enter "the Obama, Pelosi, Reid agenda," derisively scorned in 2010's conservative attack ads all across the nation. And if most polls are to be believed, it has come to represent something evil in the minds of "likely voters," instead of the record of legislative accomplishment by the 111th Congress, which the projected 112th will attempt to undo,



Not Liberal Enough?


Videos: MSNBC

Changing the Change Audio Embed: Dave Ross, KIRO-FM/Seattle, 11/02/10