If a politician changed their stance on a subject, they risk getting labeled as flip-flopping.
If they hold firm, they risk being called out of touch with their electorate.
What do we expect from our elected officials. Should they listen to the people in their districts, and vote according to popular demand? Should they take the line of “You elected me with these ideas/plans/agendas. I’m sticking to them.”
I’ve always hoped (not expected, but hoped) that they would vote in the way that they thought was best for the country primarily, and their state or district secondarily. I don’t believe that a representative’s voting should directly reflect the current will of his constituents; we could just revert to direct votes by the electorate on all legislation if that’s what we were after.
I’ve always felt that politicians should balance the will of the people with their own longer-term ideas/plans/agendas. Going too far in either direction is a recipie for disaster.
That said, I’ve never agreed with the whole “flip-flop” smear anyway; I want a representative with enough brains to change his (or her) mind as new information becomes available. If I wanted someone who’d never change his mind no matter what, I’d appoint a four-year-old to office.
Or my 78-year-old father!
Most Americans are surprised to learn that the men who founded our country believed that a certain group of people was better equipped to govern than most of us. When our U.S. government was designed, it was with the commonly held wisdom of that time that learned men skilled in oratory and debate could best thrash out the issues of governing. This was a largely English idea, drawn from experience with Parliament – even the House of Commons was populated by men with formal education and schooled in public discourse.
Over time, we adopted a more French attitude of egalitarianism and within less than a century we’d elected Abraham Lincoln (although most modern Americans fail to realize just how educated Lincoln really was.)
I can’t cite specifics, but I recall seeing information (TV or the Internet, don’t remember which) that shows that the more education a voter has, the more he/she looks for certain qualities, while the less educated a voter is, the more he/she looks for matching opinions in candidates. I conclude from this that educated people care less about what a person believes than how he/she will lead, while less-educated people just want someone like them. There was no distinction between “classic” liberal arts-style educations (teachers, lawyers, journalists) and the more technical educations of physicians, engineers, etc. (I have my own opinion, but it is highly biased and not worthy of inclusion here.)
So I guess the answer to the question here is, what you want in a politician depends on who you are.
As far as smear campaigns go, an unscrupulous politician can smear a good man with his good deeds.
I’ve always liked Edmund Burke’s “Speech to the Electors of Bristol”
Mr. Howett? Is that you?
Heh. This was something my politics teacher used to quote to me all the time with reference to representative rather than direct democracry. This is basically what the OP is asking, though- if you wanted to accurately reflect the “will of the people”, it would be better to have referenda on every issue than elected representatives; it’s just that the logistics of this made it impossible when most constitutions were written. Give it another 50 or 60 years, though…
As to whether representative or direct democracy is better, I really don’t know. On the one hand, the average voter is certainly ill-informed (and sometimes poorly reasoning, from an objective standpoint) on many issues, and some of the greatest crimes in history have come from the tyranny of the majority…on the other hand, as G.K. Chesterton put it “There is no group of elites in history that, once it has achieved power, has not acted exactly as a small mob”. Plus, while the average representative may be better-informed on the issues, I don’t always see evidence that he has done a lot of thinking on the questions of government.
Ultimately, I think the best thing to do might be to have true direct democracy (via internet-based voting of some kind, for example), cutting out the corruption, patronage and self-interest of the middle man (ie. the representative) with the will of the voters constrained by some sort of Consitution, or perhaps a liberal-minded (liberal in the sense of tolerant) artificial intelligence. But then I remember things like slaughter of Lesbos, ordered by an entirely democratic Athenian assembly.
I think I’ll just pretty much echo everyone here as well. A balance must be drawn between blindly following public opinion polls and writing the masses off as “idiots”.
Part of the problem is that we’re clinging onto old things and not moving with technology. There should be a way to vote online (securely). Voting on election day should be one hundred percent accessible and simple.
For another take on it, here’s Richard Dawkins’ view, which I pretty much agree with (his response is longer, but this is his view of government by plebiscite:
Oh absolutely, I agree. Thanks for the link, by the way. It’s just that, as far as I can see, small groups of elites seem to make equally unpleasent and self-motivated decisions with almost as much regularity as electors. Essentially, though, you have to ask whether you’d rather have a well-governed country (for a relative value of “well”) that is not particuarly democratic in any genuine sense of the word (ie. every current Western democracy), or a democracy without checks on the “will of the people”, and with an attendent risk of short-sighted and morally objectionable policy decisions. Sometimes I think the only real advantage of a large-scale legislature, executive, constitution et al is that it makes passing laws so damned slow, especially if they violate that pesky constitution (bill of rights, magna carta, what have you). This means that to get a law passed you have to not only have public support, but to have it in a sustained and consistent way, and to have the personal determination and ability to game the system required to negotiate through bureaucratic waters. This slows down the pace of important legislation of course, but it also means that things like the Sun’s campaign to reintroduce the death penalty (mounted just after the particuarly unpleasent murder of a schoolgirl) don’t succeed.
Boy, I’m cynical today.
I’m one of those who doesn’t think the “will of the people” is sacrosanct, since the public is succeptible to the Moral Panic Of The Month and are remarkably short-sighted.
The majority opinion is not always right. What if civil rights had been up for vote in 1955? (I think that the modern anti-gay marriage votes are a clear indicator of the results that would have had.)
I would applaud any politician who had the courage to say that he won’t vote with the majority, imposing poorly-thought-out laws to “fix” social issues which are the current hot buttons, or removing rights from a group currently unpopular, but unfortunately, many politicians are more worried about re-election than what is right.
Unfortunately, due to the length of terms that we vote our representatives into office for, and due to the fact that the “Moral Panic Of The Month” is often what gets people elected, it’s imporant to note that the elected official may not be representative of his/her constituents if he/she is allowed to vote their conscience at some point.
I’m with the idea that there needs to be some sort of balance.
If only it were that simple. When a politician changes his poistion primarily for political gain, he is a flip-flopper. The key, of course, is to be able to discern if it’s primarily for political gain or not. That’s something we have to decide for ourselves, and I do agree that one politician calling another a flip-flopper is disingenuous-- especially at the level of Bush/Kerry. You don’t get to be a presidential nominee in this country without doing your share of flip-flopping, and Bush has certainly not immune.
As for the OP, I don’t think there is one answer. On issues where people can reasonably disagree, I think a politician is wise to do as his constituents wish-- or at least give that position a good hard look. But we elect officials to be thinking people, not just poll watchers. When in doubt, I’d say vote your conscience, then trust your constitunents to look favorably on you for doing so. If you run an honest campaign (hah!), there shouldn’t be that many surprises for the voters anyway.
It would be great to be able to vote for Edmund Burke, or someone with his intelligence. Unfortunately, the representative scenario is breaking down because the electorate does not require the candidate to state positions on issues that will be addressed legislatively. The current paradigm is to have the candidates charisma and social skills exposed ad nauseum while avoiding all political issues. The book for today’s candidates was written by Sonny Bono not by Edmund Burke.