I frequent Crooks and Liars nearly every day, sometimes to my benefit, but more often than not to my great detriment. Apparently, Crooks and Liars is the second most clicked-on Liberal website on the net, so I guess that means I’m getting the “mainstream” liberal sentiment there.
There are some smart people on Crooks and Liars. Many of them are very well educated, and I’m guessing that a lot of them likely have graduate degrees. For all that education and wealth of knowledge, most of them lack two important things: consistency and philosophical basics. That’s a fairly tall charge on my part, one man calling into question the intelligence of all of them, but I’ll use only one specific example to prove my point. From the title I’m sure you’ve already guessed that I’m going to discuss the notion of representation in American government.
Many of the folks at Crooks and Liars are unhappy with their congressional representative. They like to throw around the “R” word a lot (recall), and they get mad when the rep doesn’t vote their way. Although I think the idea of a recall is completely ridiculous, I can understand their frustration in feeling like they’re not being heard or represented in congress.
Here’s where the blatant contradiction comes in: they claim that their representatives are not supposed to “vote their conscience,” but they’re supposed to represent the will of the people. I actually agree with that notion, as that is what the Founders thought about representation in congress. Unlike the British parliamentary system of the Eighteenth Century, American representatives were supposed to be bound to the wishes and interests of their constituents. “Voting your conscience,” or representing national interest, as was the representation style of the British Parliament, was never supposed to enter in the equation.*
That was radically different from what the Britons had been used to, but the colonists had been doing it that way for quite some time before the Revolution. It was a no-brainer for them: your representative is supposed to vote the way you want him to, after all that’s why you voted for him. The Democrats seem to hold that notion to be true.
So why is it that they complain when their representatives vote in accordance with the interests of their constituents? It may come as a shock to some Liberals, but not all Americans are “intelligent progressives,” as someone once tried to convince me. If most Americans were progressives then we wouldn’t have a Republican dominated House of Representatives. If you are a Democrat and a Republican won in your district, then you have no logical ground to stand on when he votes according to the interests of the Republicans that put him in office.
Now, we can say that representatives are not supposed to only represent the people that voted for them. They’re supposed to do their best to mirror the total interests of their district. But in these hyper-partisan times, what options are they given? The only choice of representation is to represent the people who voted for you or those who are completely ideologically opposed to you and your supporters. What are they going to choose? They’ll probably opt to represent the interests of the people that voted them in office.
Just because they’re not voting for your interest, or your wishes, that doesn’t mean they’re spitting on the wishes of all their constituents and voting however they please. Sometimes they vote on their conscience, and from what I’ve read from a lot of Liberal pundits is that they wish they would vote their conscience. Someone on C&L actually said once that “I don’t vote for them to vote on their conscience,” but that same person is happy when that conscience-vote happens to be in favor of his own liberal agenda.
Can Democrats really be mad at Republicans for how they vote? If their constituents want them to vote a certain way then they have to according to the logic of American-style representation. In reality, though, the cries for better representation are just veiled screams for uniformity of thought and the progress of their personal agendas. They are okay to be ideologically inconsistent in their thoughts on representation because they don’t actually believe in the principles they espouse anyway.
Apparently, conscience-voting is okay as long as the representative is voting on your conscience. Go figure.
*The information on colonial thoughts on the nature of representation in the Eighteenth Century comes from Bernard Bailyn’s The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution.
Good post and you are right, we elect these people to vote for us–to represent us. But they can still vote their conscience as well as long as they ran on positions based on their personal feelings on the issue, for they believed that their conscience on these issues was correct and they won election based on these issues. What liberals have a hard time understanding is that not everyone agrees with them, and when they lose elections they do not want to admit they are in the minority in that district.
The idea is to vote people into office who share basic ideals and who you think will represent you based on their own personal idealism and moral compass. Representation and personal conscience must work hand-in-hand. The two are inextricably tied together.
That’s true, but people have to realize that if their candidate doesn’t win out they can’t be compeltely indignant when the representative votes in accordance with the majority will. Yes, the representative is supposed to do his best to represent everyone, but at the end of the day he’s going to not turn his back too much on the constituents.
My big problem is how people get upset when the rep doesn’t vote their way and they say “he should have voted his conscience,” and then whenever he does vote his conscience and it happens to not how that person wanted the rep to vote, the person says “well he’s not there to vote his conscience.”
I don’t fault them for voting their conscience in some instances. For example, if a district thought that it’d be a good idea to bring back lynchings, I’d probably be okay if the representative conscience-voted “no” on that one.
This presents a problem with districting, I think. Many districts are drawn up so that the parties are almost completely split down the middle in terms of how the constituents vote, and that’s probably not a good thing in terms of making sure that the most people possible are being accurately represented.
I take your point but don’t you think that constituents getting indignant with the votes of their elected representatives is the way they express their dissatisfaction? When you don’t like what your guy is doing you stand up and say so. That’s how the opposition gets started on preparing for the next election.
The whole idea of whether a person is elected to vote according to the wishes of their district or their constituency is a fascinating debate. You picked a gimme subject with lynching; but how about abortion? Let’s say a Republican is elected narrowly in his district, say 51-49. Every poll in the district shows the electorate are overwhelmingly pro-choice, say 75-25. How should the guy vote if he personally is pro-life? Does he vote his conscience or his constituents strong view?
Absolutely. Everyone has a right to be indignant if they feel they’re not accurately being represented, and what sort of country would this be if people weren’t allowed to express their dissatisfaction?
As I mentioned in the response above, I am more harping on people who are only okay with conscience-voting when it suits his or her own personal sentiments. I am in no way suggesting that they should just shut up if their representative doesn’t vote how they want. I was more addressing the ideological inconsistency that I’ve noticed some people fall into.
To be honest, abortion was the first example I was going to use. But that is a highly contentious issue that we’re likely to disagree on. I wanted to use something that we would all agree on in order to better illustrate my point about how conscience voting is sometimes a good thing, but should not be the rule-of-thumb for how representatives vote.
But to answer that question, as a representative he has to represent the people at-large, not just his own personal sentiments and feelings. In the scenario that you described, he should vote how his constituents want him to vote.
The delicate dance is that he has to figure out how to represent everyone without alienating his base. Congressmen are not just supposed to represent their party, but the people as a whole in the district. As the great Robert Dalek once said they can’t be all things to all men, but they have to get as close to the popular will as possible.
That’s at least how the Founders viewed representation anyway.
Well written. I enjoyed this article, Jack.
On another note, we are not longer in an ideologue’s left vs right mode when it comes to the debt limit. We are in a ‘save the patient mode’.
Consider: our country is in an emergency. Let’s assume America is the patient who has been driving drunk for years and who has predictably had a horrific automobile accident. Not only is the patient’s quality of life at hand but so are the lives of the drivers of the others cars involved in the accident.
In my example, the house and senate are the EMTs who are tasked to save what is left of the quality of life of the driver (America); as well as the quality of life of those others severely affected by the drunken driver. I don’t want the EMTs to lick their fingers and hold them in the wind. I don’t want them to pole the attorneys representing all involved in the accident. I want them to suck it up and save the patient(s). My (America) patient first! The far left and far right better get their stuff together and save the patient. That is what the other 70% of the nation demands as well as conscience. Doing that doesn’t mean compromising your values, anymore than mentioning choosing to refer to God at a memorial ceremony over Jesus Christ compromises your belief in Christ. Hold true to your values but do the right thing. Save the patient — then return to campaigning against drunk drivers.
Two comments from me Jack.
The first is that you frequent Crooks & Liars is a good thing regardless if your of the Left or Right, the fact is that it represents the thoughts of a segment of the population and we must ask can one be a pundit, commentaor or even a blogger if one closes his or her eyes to what drives the population? I think that is what many bloggers and pundits do and that is why so many are in fact so extreme.
As for voting in the representative of your choice, there is a large question that one must consider and that is are you voting in a person for you, for the community or the best candidate available?
As much as we want our own opinions and beliefs represented in Congress, Parliament, Knesset or Duma etc, the fact is that it is not you that is the candidate and they have their own conscious, motivations and party allegences. Sometimes that candidate is a great protector of your community and dedicated to improving things, but heor she may not be of your party and agree with everything that you like, what do you do? Add to that the list of candidates may be in fact poor and the though one may think like you in most ways, they simply will do a poor job or have no chance of being elected at all and there may be a better candidate, with more chances of success and has the personality to get things done. Again, what do you do.
If I am making any point at all, it is how important selecting elected officials are and the medium – to – long -term effects are huge if screwed-up for short-term objectives. Democracy is great but is prone to manipulation – popularism, money and false promisses.
D Charles
Gibraltar
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