Hello, beautiful people! We have another Monday upon us, so we also have another post by Stephen Hall. Thank you, Stephen, and everyone have a good week!!
I’d like to speak with you about a modern misconception of the very nature of politics. I’d like to, but this being a blog post, the most I can do is to type at you those errant and erratic thoughts which occur to me as I type.
What is the actual intended function of a politician in a representative republic? Who, or what, whose interests, or what cause does a “representative” actually represent and how does that compare with the intention of those people of the times of the Founding Fathers who actually approved the Constitution?
I mention those people of the times because whatever the intentions of the writers and composers of the Constitution, the true meaning of that constitution must be viewed from the perspective, as best we can determine, of those voters in the several states who actually approved of the Constitution thus enacting the document and creating our government.
The true founders of our nation were not the political leaders like that George fellow, but rather those who selected them for leadership, or those who selected representatives to the Continental Congress and supported the creation of our new nation through taxation of their hard work, without their contributions no nation can exist.
We continually underestimate the intellectual contributions of the common man who contribute their perspective by their tolerance and acquiescence alternatively of the ramblings or elucidations of the political class.
What is a political race, whether primary or general, but the appeal to the common man that the politician is the person to best express, advocate, and enact the will of the voters? That is how, provided the races are not fixed, any candidate can achieve first the nomination of their party and last the office to represent our nation.
The race is won by expressing those ideals which appeal to a sufficient concordance of the active voters, as one only needs the majority support, or in some case a mere plurality, of those who actually bothered to turn out to vote, and then only to such a degree that they appear the best alternative, or the lesser of two evils depending on your perspective and the quality of the competition.
Which brings our discussion to the modern phenomena of “polling issue politics”, that is to say we are in the process of creating possibly one of the worst concepts in the history of political discourse that of candidates who commission polls on political issues in order to cobble together their political platform from the populist responses.
This is not so far distant from former practices of parties selecting and supporting candidates based on their own polling who happen to have expressed the populist positions in order to have candidates who are popular; but it is also disturbingly and cynically open and honest pandering to the desires of the public because it is not choosing a candidate who believes those positions but a candidate choosing to advocate positions which they don’t believe simply because they are popular.
Are these candidates so intellectually vacuous that they really have no opinion or knowledge about the popular issues that they are willing to be simply nothing more than a mouthpiece for other people’s ideas and opinions?
Or, are these candidates so morally vacuous that they will freely vote and advocate against that which they believe, what they know to be correct, simply to be popular and get the job of political representative as nothing more than a paid broadcaster like those people on the nightly news simply reading the bills that other people wrote and set before them?
Aside from what such a practice says about the candidate themselves, what does it really say about the voting public and the purpose for which they hold the position of politician in general?
There is a view that a politician’s job is but to present the opinions of his constituents, that he is nothing more than a spokesman for the collective opinion of the voters. This view is often reflected in the practice of Congressmen only taking calls and emails from people within their own voting district, because they do not, in theory, represent the voters of other districts and care not a whit for those people’s opinions.
However, reflect for a moment on the close political race where nearly half of the voters of that district voted against those very policies. This view of the politician as the voters’ mouthpiece silences the minority of every district, the voter is either in the majority or their opinion is worthless.
That seems a rather condescending approach, but an all too common attitude of many politicians. On the other hand, it is all too easy to see that this concern over the opinions of the voters goes right out the window when it comes to campaign contributions. One needs only look at the millions of dollars of out of state contributions to one Robert O’Rourke running against Ted Cruz.
The political donor is not restricted to expressing his opinions in his own district, so why should the average citizen be so limited? I do not mean in a practical financial sense, but in the abstract philosophical understanding of who the politician represents. If the politician only represents the opinions of his district, then political contributions from outside his district ought to be strictly forbidden if we are to be intellectually honest.
Consider the recent law passed in Colorado that the electors in the Electoral College may be legally bound to vote against the expressed majority of their voters in favor of California voters. This is directly contrary to this philosophy of the representative to represent the will of those who voted for him.
This discussion would not be complete without bringing to bear the importance of the 17th Amendment as well as the structural division of the House into districts. There is the conception that the representative represents, rather than his own perspective or the voter’s perspective, the interests of the district itself, not merely those who voted for him, and not just including those how voted against him, but those who didn’t or couldn’t vote who also live in his district.
Bringing home the bacon, as the saying goes is one side of such a political view, thus it is the job of the politician to bring as much tax money back to their county or district from the state and federal government in the form of government projects and spending as they possibly can.
This is the perspective which drives presidential hopefuls into supporting farm subsidies in Iowa even though they may be from a state in which agriculture plays little part in their economy and their personal philosophy might favor free markets over government subsidies, but they have to win that Iowa caucus. It also kept WV’s Robert Byrd in office as head of the appropriations committee and the foolish seniority priority system in the House and Senate despite there being no Constitutional or rational provisions for such.
Of course, in theory, the House represents the people of their respective districts, the Senate representing the states, and the President representing the interests of the nation as a whole; the idea that the state legislatures choosing the Senators would provide a restraint upon the excesses of the federal government where competition between the states would provide a similar restraint against the excesses of any particular state.
The downside of this district view of representation is that while the nation as a whole may be better off not spending such money, that state or district spends all of its time trying to get its share that the position of limitation and restraint of spending gets overran.
The founders of this nation had a different concept of the representative, that because the voter could not know at the time of election what issues may arise during the statesman’s tenure, because the common voter could not be familiar with all of the intricacies of every potential issue which might arise, that the voter ought to focus upon the moral and intellectual integrity of the candidates that the elected statesman would then use their own reason and judgment when voting upon any issue.
It was their position that the politician was to represent that politician’s own intellectual and moral philosophy, even if it differed from the will of his own voters. The mark of a true statesman was a man of such integrity and honesty that he was willing to cast the unpopular vote, express the unpopular opinion if he thought it the right thing to do, then explain his position and reasoning to the voting public.
In this philosophical approach, the politician represents not the voters, but himself. It is the individual’s own opinion, morals, and intellect which he presents on any issue, his own desire for understanding which drives debate rather than the sound-byte to send back to his voters for their approval. It is only when the politician represents himself that any issue can be truly debated and discussed rather than putting on a dog and pony show for the public.
The truth is that the politician will reflect that approach of philosophy of the voters themselves. If the people want nothing more of their “leaders” than to reflect the populist rabble, then that is who they will elect. There was a time when any politician who sought to poll the public to form their position would have been thought too morally weak and corrupt to ever hold public office.
Our standards as voters has fallen. We will get the politicians we deserve.
