Mobile Capitol

Wow - aren't I the prolific writer. A post every 7 months isn't that bad, is it?

Today I was thinking that it would be useful for a country to have a mobile capitol. Or, perhaps more accurately a rotating capitol.

It wasn't practical at the time our capitol was set up, of course. By the time everyone got word that they were supposed to meet in Maryland instead of Delaware this year, they would already have needed to be there a month ago.

However, now, you can call/IM/fax/text/etc and within 6 hours a person can fly from anywhere in the country to anywhere else in the country (with the exceptions of Alaska and Hawaii, sorry guys).

What if, instead of having a fixed capitol we had a rotating capitol? This 4 years it's in Houston. Next 4 years it's in Fargo. Then it's in Kansas City. Then Los Angeles. Every one of these places have empty office spaces that can be rented for 4 years while Congress conducts its business.

The advantages, as I see it, are that our leaders will no longer be able to get comfortable in a single place or way of thinking. D.C. has become it's own gigantic thing with the entire city focusing on feeding (and feeding off of) the government that meets there. Long time politicians will no longer be able to ignore 'flyover' country or other areas that aren't their cup of tea because they may be living there in a few years.

Of course, there are drawbacks. Security for one. D.C. is used to being the capitol and an entire security mechanism is built up. If they moved the capitol around, new security procedures would have to be put into place. The 'little people' would also have to deal with the politicians more often. Sometimes it's nice that I only have to worry about seeing them on T.V. (and that can always be turned off).

Obviously this is the seed of an idea and not a fully formed plan. Still, I think it's worth considering.