At the Aspen Ideas Festival, we're asking the jet-setting attendees one big question a day. Today: Forget about great ideas, tell us a stupid idea.
Michele Norris, host of NPR's All Things Considered.
"Videoscreens in cars. I have a rental car that has this big screen with all this information on it that draws your eye away from the road. The ones in the back are actually a good idea. I'm talking about the ones in the dashboard, like really big screens. Like as big as an iPad screen almost. It's a lot of stuff going on. It's like watching CNBC with all those crawls and everything. Is that a good idea having that much going on on a screen that would draw your attention away from the truck that might be in front of you?
David Leonhardt, Washington bureau chief of The New York Times.
"That education doesn't matter. The idea of being so negative about the value of education that you effectively discourage people who are on the fence about whether to go to community college or whether to stay in college or whether to graduate ... I think is a really damaging thing and I think we see it too often. People have gotten confused about the fact that even the educated suffer in a terrible downturn, which has clearly happened. And they've confused that with the idea that the returns to education have fallen. And if you look at the gap between college graduates and everyone else it's essentially at an all time high. And so college graduates have not been immune from the downturn."
Ron Christie, former special assistant to President George W. Bush and chief executive of Christie Strategies.
"The trope that partisanship rules Washington. That's dumb. Washington has been more partisan than it is now. Washington has been far more inoperable than it is now. I think it's a dumb idea to suggest that we can't come together regardless of your political affiliation to solve the problems that we need to solve in this country and put aside our differences. Yes things are polarized, yes people are upset but if people believe that Democrats are only going to work with Democrats and Republicans are only going to work with Republicans, it's not borne out by the facts."