Ballot Boxes Louder Than Town Halls

Let’s go right to the props. Those go to U.S. Rep. Mike Flood, R-Neb., who faced a hostile crowd at an in-person town hall meeting last week in Lincoln.

From my seat in the back of beautiful Kimball Hall on the University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s City Campus, the gathering did not disappoint. Nor — without mentioning names but their initials are Adrian Smith, Don Bacon and Deb Fischer — would Flood’s experience do anything but dissuade other Nebraska electeds to take the hot seat. To wit: The guy deserves an attaboy.

Before we get carried away, however, whatever information exchange he or the throng hoped for never materialized. Such is the nature of the modern political in-person town hall. Some peg the beginning of these boisterous beasts to 2009, when conspiracy theorists started showing