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Please, President Obama. Not another ‘national conversation.’

By Carlos Lozada,February 01, 2013

Carlos Lozada is The Washington Post’s Outlook editor. Follow him on Twitter: carloslozadaWP.

It’s getting pretty noisy in here with all these national conversations.

There’s the national conversation on gun violence. And the one on immigration. And income inequality. And marriage equality. And debt. And climate change. And obesity. And bullying. And, of course, race.

After a while, it’s hard to know whose turn it is to talk, what everyone is saying or which conversations really matter — especially because they’re all “long overdue.”

Politicians love calling for national conversations, but without a doubt, President Obama is our national conversationalist in chief. He has launched or identified conversations on issues great and small and considers them vital to our democracy.

And you’d better get ready for plenty more of them. Speaking last monthwith the New Republic, Obama affirmed that, in his second term, he and his White House team will be “spending a lot more time in terms of being in a conversation with the American people as opposed to just playing an insider game here in Washington.”

But are these national conversations really conversations? Or is the term a political ploy, a kindly euphemism for our bitter divides? Or, in Obama’s case, is a national conversation a fail-safe when face-to-face conversations fall short?

I hate to say it, but it might be time for a national conversation — about our national conversations.

It’s long overdue.

He wasn’t the first person to speak of “national conversations” in the popular press, but if anyone is responsible for popularizing the term, it is former education secretary, onetime drug czar and all-purpose conservative scold Bill Bennett.

Since his days in the Reagan administration, Bennett has constantly called for national conversations — on the place of religion in American life, on the proper relationship between the government and the people, on foreign policy and much more. When he dropped his bid for the 1996 GOP presidential nomination, he pledged to remain engaged in the national conversation on “the cultural and social condition of modern America.” (He’s still at it: Last month he wrote an essay outlining a “national conversation about poverty.”)

But like many others who have called for national conversations, Bennett always seems to have clear conclusions in mind, whether limited government or the defeat of secularism. And that is precisely what renders such conversations largely non-conversational.

A true conversation “doesn’t have a goal; it’s spontaneous,” says Daniel Menaker, the author of “A Good Talk: The Story and Skill of Conversation.” It’s about “making a human connection . . . you walk away feeling better.”

Our alleged national conversations don’t fit the bill, Menaker contends. “Better just to call them what they are — a discussion, a debate, even an argument.”

Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank has suggested that politically inspired national conversations are unavoidable in a talk-therapy age. And certainly, when a politician calls for a national conversation on reproductive health, it’s more inviting than saying, “Hey, let’s fight about birth control!” But fiercely held and mutually exclusive opinions won’t magically disappear if we frame them as a feel-good conversation.

Just recall the town hall meetings surrounding President Obama’s health-care legislation in 2009. The notion of a town hall (so Athenian!) has become an indispensable element of our conversational stagecraft: citizens gathering in a public square to discuss important issues and engage their political leaders in the timeless tradition of democratic societies.

Except that unhappy Americans showed up packing heat, America’s first black president was depicted as a Nazi, and the truth got a little muddled in translation. Not very conversational.

Virulence is not the only problem. Many political pleas for national conversations are too vague or self-serving to propel real dialogue. Think of Al Gore declaring in 1992 that he was joining the Democratic presidential ticket to help “make this campaign a national conversation about America’s future.”

Or Hillary Rodham Clinton launching her 2008 campaign by promising that “I’m not just starting a campaign . . . I’m beginning a conversation — with you, with America.”

Or Newt Gingrich, who last year called for “a national conversation among Republicans . . . over who can beat Barack Obama.” (Was Newt really open to discussion on that one?)