Making Politics More like "American Idol"

I finally got something useful out of "American Idol" - an idea for a political model. I only watch "American Idol" early in the season to laugh at the crazy people show up to try out and get on TV, even though I think most of them know they have no chance of "going to Hollywood." When it's down to lousy Eagles covers by the top-rated singers, I lose all interest in "American Idol."

But the "American Idol" format got me thinking. If Congressional legislation faced a panel of judges, then a public vote, party gridlock could end, better legislation would be passed and millions of citizens might actually pay attention to politics, "American Idol"-style.

Here's my plan:

We still elect our 535 senators and representatives and they still go to Washington, get assigned to committees and write new legislation.

But with politics "American Idol"-style, each committee would have a panel of five experts to review each bill. I'm sure we could find five experts who are also as entertaining as Simon Cowell. Have Michael Pollan, Rachael Ray and Richard Simmons debate food policy with those stuffy senators. CSPAN ratings would skyrocket, and there would still be room for two leading agriculture and food policy professors who actually know what they're talking about. They could help move forward on really good ideas and dump really bad ideas. For example, they could take the blame for cutting the excessive corn subsidies. Farm state senators wouldn't have to worry about their political careers, but maybe we'd start getting corn syrup out of every product at the grocery store. The experts could also bag - and roundly mock on national TV - really dumb, politically expedient proposals such as a federally-funded corn statue of Abraham Lincoln.

Like "American Idol" singers, the best ideas move on to the next round, where some really smart generalists such as Fareed Zakaria could pick the best proposals to send to a vote of the people.

Finally, we'd get to the direct democracy rounds. Just like the end of the "American Idol" season, when people vote on the best singers, the people could vote on a handful of really important bills. And you wouldn't be limited to voting on Tuesday using paper ballots. You could vote for a week or something, and vote online and by text message.

We could throw some stimulus money at those Google geniuses to figure out a way to ensure only one vote per person and clean ballot counting. Google is already watching us all the time anyway. They probably know how to keep us from ballot-stuffing.

This is Congressional Idol.