Vote for Thought, Not Just Opinion

"Your representative owes you not his industry only, but his judgment, and he betrays, instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your opinion." Edmund Burke

What is it that we look for in someone when we are choosing him for office? Is it someone we think will simply vote the way we want him to? Is it someone who says the things that we agree with, or someone we think will present legislation that we want to see passed? I think when Burke made this statement it was a call for people to remember that their elected representation in the government is not only their voice, but also their eyes and ears. It is that official’s responsibility to take in the information on issues and policies and respond to it with his or her best judgment.

Take the war in Iraq for example. A few years ago, shortly after 9-11-01, there was very strong support of the president when he deployed troops to respond to the threats of terrorism in Iraq and Afghanistan. The congress, including several presidential hopefuls in the 2004 election, voted almost unanimously to send the troops. As we came closer to this election and public frustration with the duration of the military operations in Iraq began to grow, some of these same congressmen began to change what they said about the war. The trouble here is not whether the issue of going to war was right or wrong in the first place, but that elected officials were bending there positions based on public popular opinion.

I have some respect for the President, not because I agree with what he has done in the war, but because the entire way, he has upheld his stance on it and not wavered from the task that his original judgment called him to take on. The President would be doing his country a disservice if he changed his stance every time the public started making noise about it. He is supposed to represent the will of the people and we have a system for that. It is that we can elect whomever we think will make the judgments that best represent what we need and believe. If we decide that someone isn’t making those judgments effectively, we can vote him out.