Earlier today, I went to an event sponsored by Pennsylvania Senator Arlen Specter in which he answered twenty questions asked of him by audience members. The popular press prefers to call such a gathering a "town hall meeting," a name I find myself questioning. The City of Philadelphia is not a town by any measure and our University's student union building is no town hall.

The term is, of course, meant to evoke the establishments of local governance whose history in our country can be traced back to the legislative bodies of New England colonies (a tradition that continues in some places across the nation). But it wasn't until the bicentennial of America's independence that the modern political concept of the town hall meeting emerged.

While campaigning in the 1976 presidential election, Jimmy Carter discovered that the town hall meeting was an efficient way to increase his emergent popularity. After the idea developed for a couple of decades, Bill Clinton furthered its prominence by televising his town hall meetings. George W. Bush considered the events to be so crucial that he often made sure his audience contained no dissenters. Why did these presidents consider this relatively recent political phenomenon to be so important?

 Sidney Blumenthal, a journalist and former Clinton aide, credited the rise of the town hall meeting to the "disintermediation" of politics -- that is, the elimination of the intermediary that is the media. Politicians benefit from this disintermediation by growing popular support for their policies and initiatives without having to field (what are usually) tougher questions from trained journalists and without having to address follow-up questions, all the while making themselves appear to be populists who are in touch with common people -- all in a setting that is more of a public relations opportunity than a press conference. The public (supposedly) benefits from having greater direct access to the politician.

These days, all politicians -- from the President to the most minor public official -- seem to be holding their own town hall meetings. But these superficial attempts at conversation add nothing to, and perhaps even detract from, the public discourse. The vitriol that came out of the completely ineffectual town hall meetings on health care this summer prove that point.

If politicians truly want to connect with the public and improve this flawed model of town hall meetings, they need to find a way to revert to the historical beginnings of these gatherings in colonial New England. The reason its town halls proved so successful was because of the diverse participation they promoted and the informed dialogue they supported. Today's town hall meetings would do well to learn from their ideal of truly deliberative democracy.