This was on the N & O Website this morning and I thought it was interesting enough to share.

Presidents should submit to grillings

When U.S. Rep. Joe Wilson of South Carolina shouted “You lie!” at President Barack Obama a couple of weeks ago, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s dark eyes shot daggers. Her scornful message: How dare you?!

And that, not Wilson’s outburst or the veracity of his accusation, is our problem.

Politicians in Washington, as in Raleigh, like to think they’re better than you or me. They demand regal deference — and we comply cravenly.

Worse, we embrace a double standard. Seconds before Wilson’s spasm, Obama himself had said of an unwelcome criticism of his program, “It is a lie, plain and simple.” The response? Applause.

We’ve got our undue deference backward. Our governors owe all their power to the consent of the governed. (That’s us, folks.) So says our defiant Declaration of Independence.

The president isn’t a king, or even our boss. He (or she) is our temporary hired help. We the people are the boss. We are the sovereign.

Yet many presidents bristle at being questioned by anyone — and we acquiesce. The U.S. House forbids its members to call any president a liar, a hypocrite or “intellectually dishonest,” even when true. Even the supposedly hard-bitten Washington press corps often turns meek in the face of presidential pique.

This subservience disserves America.

Instead of performing staged town-hall meetings and delivering scripted lectures, our presidents should submit to frequent, free-ranging questioning by our Congress, as Britain’s prime minister does to its Parliament.

It should be orderly, but wide open. Our democracy needs more accountability, not less.

And that, my fellow Americans, is no lie.

Matthew Eisley is editor of The N&O’s North Raleigh News and Midtown Raleigh News.