Website I Want: A Political Rorschach Test

A few days back, I was talking to one of my conservative friends and I asked him who his pick was in the GOP field. His response: Herman Cain. What?! How was this possible? Sure, I liked Cain's outsider appeal, and his 9-9-9 tax plan was delightfully audacious. But what about his comments about a Muslim serving in his cabinet, or his odd reading of the first amendment, or his unusual stance on abortion, or the infamous Libya interview question? Didn't these sway my friend? Nope, not really.

Which got me thinking...you've got sites like Politifact.com which try to tease apart truth from lies. And that's a good thing. But I'm curious about what people actually see when they see a clip or transcript. Which is why I think we need the a political Rorschach website. Here's how it would work:

• Website curators post a clip or transcript to the site (heck, maybe even an article or blog entry)
• Visitors come to the site perform one of two actions:
  1. They offer a one or two sentence explanation ("I see a clip that's been edited to tell a new story", "Here's proof that candidate X knows nothing about Y!")
  2. They vote on explanations that are most appealing to them

That's it. Over time, I'd think a few different explanations would converge. If all went as planned, you'd get an idea what each constituency was actually interpreting when viewing the same media.

This site isn't really about changing people's minds. Instead, it's about understanding what someone who adamantly disagrees with you can be thinking. Who knows, from there, maybe a little common ground could be found. Or not.

Who's with me?