Fickle Politicians- why the hate?

In My Humble Opinion
1

From an early age, I learned that politicians are the representatives of the people, and are supposed to work for the good of their constituents, namely by doing what the greater percentage of those constituents said they wanted.

Say as a town council member, I was elected for running against killing baby seals. Wasn’t pleasant, not eco or fiscally responsible, drove away tourists…

Then, by being in power, I learned that the real estate developers were paying local louts to beat the seals to lower values. Now, while I still don’t like the baby seal killers, I don’t care so much about them, as about root causes. So I go after the developers, and some of my followers are still happy, but some of their spouses are dependent on developer’s jobs, so I lose some.

I get elected mayor. As mayor, I find out it is oil interests looking to work through the developers. Now I still don’t like the baby seal killers or the developers, but I am gonna go after the oil interests and the developers, and I don’t have time for baby seal killers. The baby seal killer opponents don’t buy it. I have now lost my base group of folks, even though they are also against the oil interests, but some of their spouses are dependent on such.

I then have met more constituents at higher levels, and somehow make governor. The rest of the state doesn’t give a shit about what was going on with baby seals or developers or oil interests, except that they want me to restore prosperity. It is my job to do what my constituents want, NO MATTER WHAT I WANT! Or so I was told in school. So I roll up my sleeves and go to work, pandering to everyone but the baby seal killers, so I can re-introduce prosperity, as I can see that while I was indeed working for those initial constituents, I was actively running contrary to the needs of the state as a whole.

Now everyone hates me, or at least is wary of me, on some level, as I have flip-flopped. BUT, I have always remained true to the will of the people.

Why the hate? Forget the desire for a politician who ‘stays bought’, as that is really grift and bribery, not interested. Pretend this politician was old money, or won the lottery, grassroots, whatever.

Our representatives are supposed to represent us even as we change our opinions. Bush, as I see it, had great popularity, because he did what we wanted him to do. As a flaming hardcore liberal for the most part, I wanted Bush to kick somebody’s ass right after 9/11, and he did. Not the right asses, by going into Iraq, but I always wanted Saddam out anyway.

Later, I was done with all that, and wanted the wars to stop. Apparently, to judge by approval ratings, so did many others. Didn’t happen. He didn’t change with the will of the people.

I think that many politicians should be allowed to change, with the will of the people.

Most of the country seems to think that we should just be presented with a person with a single set of rock-solid ideals that will NEVER change, and vote for that person- and if they ever waver, dump them and pick the next best choice.

I never got that.

What is the deal? Can you guys edumacate a puor simple country boy?

(I don’t know if this is a great debate, so I stuck it here)

Thanks!

ps- all completely hypothetical situation.

2

It’s an easy thing to knock, that’s all. Every single congressman has multiple “flip-flops” on record. You vote for the first version, it comes back from the Senate all twisted around, and you vote against it. You never changed, the bill did, but not its title.
Actually I like to think everyone in power is deciding as they go along. A judge will let a trial proceed, then he is asked to vacate that ruling. I want him to decide on the new basis, not stick fast to his old decision out of “loyalty to the past”.

3

In general, changing your stand is considered a sign that you are not following through on your campaign promises.

If you promise to nuke the baby seals for Jesus, and then decide that it would be better to let them live, the supporters of the NTBSFJ movement will fell you betrayed them. The anti-NTBSFJ crowd will be happy you changed your mind, but may not trust you because you promised to NTBSFJ. They’ll resent you ran on that platform and also worry if you might change your mind at some point.

A politician who promises to nuke the baby seals for Jesus will piss off the anti-NTBSFJ crowd, but since he got elected, he can write them off – they were going to vote against him next time anyway. And the NTBSFJ crowd will be happy he did what they asked and vote for him again.

To change, people must be willing to accept that all things aren’t black and white, us vs. them. The understanding should be that you elect people to weigh the issue and choose a course that is best for the majority, and realize that sometimes you’re not going to get what you want.

But good luck getting that.

4

Also, there are two different schools of thought for how politicians should work: as a representative, or a trustee. Either your constituents elected you to carry their views to wherever, or they elected you because they trust your judgement. Neither way is really right or wrong, and most members of Congress combine the approaches to some extent.

5

I don’t know why you equate these things. One of the main reasons to have a republic rather than a direct democracy is to have legislators who act in the best interest of their constituents, which does not equal simply doing whatever their constituents want. From Federalist #10:

Thus, flip-flopping on this view means you don’t care about what is in the public’s best interest; you only care about what is popular at a given time (with an eye to getting re-elected).

6

Well, I suppose this is indeed what I mean when I say I was taught at an early age- no one mentioned representative republics to me until I was in seventh grade. Before that, we were always mentioned as a democracy, which is patently false at the highest levels, while more nominally true locally.

The overwhelming percentage of the folks with whom I have had F2F conversations regarding this seem to think that if anyone ever changes their mind for any reason, then they have lost the trust of the people.

Not to try to hijack my own thread, but I think that is why so many are disillusioned with Obama’s Afgan waffling right now. I think he is simply reflecting the US citizen’s waffling.

I personally think that we need to get out of the unwinnable war. Or we can be like the Soviets in the eighties, just a thousand times more expensive to us.

But I was all for- 100% for, nearly joined up for hitting the ground in Afganistan back in 2001. I just think we need to get out now, as soon as we can. We cannot win, and shouldn’t try to do anything more than leave goodwill and an appreciation of the democratic ideal.