The White House has demonstrated that they’re simply going to ignore any “We the People” petitions instead of engaging in actual debate as they promised. Knowing this I believe one petition submitted on the website has an excellent chance of achieving its goal:
We demand a vapid, condescending, meaningless, politically safe response to this petition.
Since these petitions are ignored apart from an occasional patronizing and inane political statement amounting to nothing more than a condescending pat on the head, we the signers would enjoy having the illusion of success. Since no other outcome to this process seems possible, we demand that the White House immediately assign a junior staffer to compose a tame and vapid response to this petition, and never attempt to take any meaningful action on this or any other issue. We would also like a cookie.
OK I doubt the last part will be honored by the White House but the rest of the petition will likely be enacted as stated. Isn’t it sad that our government is so blatant about ignoring the people that it’s willing to create a petition website, claim they will give each petition that receives an arbitrarily selected number of signatures a fair shake, and then simply toss any petitions that would change the status quo into the online equivalent of a fire? If a private business treated customers this way (and didn’t have the backing of the United States government to get away with it) they would soon find themselves in bankruptcy as its customers fled to their competition.