It never existed on this Earth.
Going on memory, one of the more intelligent former posters on the SDMB, Liberal I think, accurately described the typical democracy or republic as being, in reality a duo-polistic elective dictatorship.
I concur with that.
Once you’ve cast your vote every now and then, you don’t really have any power or influence on politicians. That’s why they can safely ignore you.
Quotes as read in the New York Times:
“And as to whether or not I make decisions based upon polls, I don’t. I just don’t make decisions that way.”—President Bush, April 13
“One adviser said the White House had examined polling and focus group studies in determining that it would be a mistake for Mr. Bush to appear to [admit mistakes].”, April 15
I rest my case. Apparently, the polling on admitting mistakes changed.
Yes, and that’s what is so confusing about why so many Congressmen were willing to give Bush the authority to go to war in the first place. The received wisdom is that it was the politically smart thing to do, and yet right before they voted to do so (Oct 7, 2002):
The other poll numbers are even more telling (emphasis added):
So, let’s forget about Bush for a moment. We know he was itching for this war. The question is, why did our elected representatives give him the approval to do so? What, exactly, were they afraid of? It couldn’t have been public opinion…
I know Bush bears the primary responsibility for this war-- he led us into it. But he couldn’t have done so if our representatives in Congress had listened to us.
I didn’t say that. The thought that I should be content should a President continue a war, stop medical research or for example try and remove a woman’s right to make decisions about her own body is stupid.
Bush is taking it over there so it won’t pester him over here.
No, Bush’s ‘man date’ would be Jeff Gannon.
My take on it at the time was that our representatives voted to give the President the power to invade Iraq if all else failed. Only the President decided to use war as a first choice instead of a last resort.
My take is that we all knew he was going to invade if he was given the authorization to do so. Yeah, there was a lot a rhetoric from Bush that it would only be a last resort, but we knew we were going to war-- let’s not fool oursleves about that. In the poll I cited, less than 1/3 of Americans thought this was about WMDs and well over half thought it was about toppling Saddam Hussein.
You can face consequences for being right, too, if people don’t come around to your side fast enough for it to help you in the next election.
To expand on Johnny L.A.'s point, it was not at all clear whether or not Saddam would have let the inspectors back into Iraq if the resolution had not passed. So, the question that the representatives faced was actually more difficult than you make it out to be. I.e., by voting against the resolution, they would have to think that Iraq was so little of a risk that they didn’t really think it was that important to get inspectors in at all. (Or, they could think other things, like the resolution wouldn’t significantly increase the likelihood he would let inspectors in.)
This is not to let the reps and Senators totally off the hook here but just to point out that the vote was more complicated than you (John Mace) seem to make it out to be.
Yes, that was pretty funny: We listened to input from Congress who contributed a lot of thought on this. But then we decided to disregard it. :smack:
Yes, getting the inspectors in was the pretex for the AUMF, but I think the poll numbers I cited show that most Americans knew it was all about the war. If those didn’t convince you, maybe these will (from the same cite):
The AUMF could have been crafted to allow the troops into the region but give Congress the ultimate say as to whether or not we would invade. Leaving it up to the sole discretion of Bush pretty much locked war in as a strategy.
Wonder if there’s a poll on that, from back then.
My recollection was that the people on either end of the political spectrum mostly believed we were going to war, and those in the middle - certainly the pundits in the middle - mostly took Bush at his word, and said us dirty hippies on the left had no reason to distrust our Fearless Leader.
Nitpick: that’s ‘about half,’ (53% = within MOE of 50%) not ‘well over half.’ No biggie, though.
True in some cases. But at least if you made the right decision you can figure people will come around eventually. Look at Ford - he pardoned Nixon and was widely condemned and it probably cost him the 1976 election. But by the time he died, most people agreed he had made the right decision. The same happened with Bush Sr in 1991 with his decision not to occupy Iraq.
My post immediately before yours addresses this. The question wasn’t precisely that, but I think it was close enough.
My bad. I should have just said “over half”.
I was thinking of Ford when I wrote that. He’s been vindicated by popular opinion, but as far as the democratic process goes, it didn’t do him any good. He lost in 1976 because of the same pardon that people are now praising.
Actually, for all practical purposes, the regular voters are stuck with picking a candidate from a small selection of nominees presented to us by the national level decision makers in the political parties.
I am sure that somewhere in the vast rolls of the Democratic Party membership, there may have been someone wiser than Al Gore, John Kerry. (The same applies to the Republicans vis-a-vis G. Bush, etc.) But those wiser folks either didn’t want the job, or they could not come to agreeable terms with the national party leadership.
Votes for candidates from parties other than the two main ones seem like “protest/throw away” votes.
These candidates are selected via some process that remains mostly unknown to the public at large. (Even in the Primary elections, the Dem./Rep. parties present a short list of typically two or three candidates.)
For all it’s mystifying (to me) clumsiness, sometimes we get lucky, and a good person gets the job. Sometimes not. It is frustrating, but I don’t wanna give up on the whole thing yet.
I’d beg to differ. For instance, if people believed we’d ultimately wind up in war because they believed Saddam had WMDs, he wasn’t going to give them up, and so of course he wasn’t going to cooperate, then that’s quite different from Bush taking us to war, no matter what Saddam did, because he’d already paid a month’s rent on the battlefield.
But as long as you’ve got two valid choices, then the two sides have to present a candidate they think the voters will elect. If for example, the voters decided that height was the most important consideration in choosing a President, you wouldn’t see Danny DeVito getting a nomination from either party. You’d see Shaq O’Neill running against Yao Ming. By the same token, if the voters really wanted an intelligent candidate then both parties would present intelligent nominees. But the voters don’t really want a smart President - they’ll say they do but when election day comes around they’ll vote for the “regular joe” instead of the “egghead”.