Human beings are flawed. That’s just the way they be. Politicians amplify the flaws of human nature – the bent of compromise in place of conviction; heeding the interests of the majority instead of the truth, whether the numbers add up to more votes or not; and of course, power of any kind in the hands of one or the few, even for a limited amount of time, tends to corrupt people.
Yet in today’s political discourse, the winds of approval and opprobrium spin faster than one can engage or endure, and the majority of Americans, both day to day consumers of news along with political pundits, both left and right, are outraged, nay shocked —shocked! -- to witness their beloved pet politicians fail in one point or another. -- Now more than ever, it seems that men and women are expecting the world and then some from their representatives, when the Framers of the Constitution never intended for anyone to advance such trust and confidence in the federal powers, or even their state governments for that matter. Before the turn of the Eighteenth Century, Virginia and Kentucky passed express Resolutions to nullify the Adam’s Administrations Alien and Sedition Acts. 1815, the Hartford Convention, and the New England states were planning another country of their own, when were no “Damn-Bargo” would bar them from international trade, whether Napoleon or Louis XVIII rules in France, whether Wellington rule the waves or not, either. In 1830, John C. Calhoun and the South Carolina stakeholders moved to reject any Tariff which would hurt their cotton exports.
The statesmen of the past appraised the freedom of men more than the power of the state. This state of mind has been abandoned from the ship of state today, where the men who advance the power of the state do so at the peril of those who ship them to power in the first place. Consider Rick Santorum, former US Senator of Pennsylvania: a Big Government conservative, if there ever was one, of if such a political can still exist, he protected the unborn and pork projects without conflict. He lost his senate seat by double-digits, only to climb from outlier to challenging the front-runner (of sorts) during the 2012 GOP Presidential primaries with a record as mixed as Romney’s.
Then there’s New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, lauded during his first year as the Garden State’s chief executive. He cut like a weed-wacker through the tax increase culture of previous Governor Jon Corzine. Yet while cutting taxes and killing pork projects, while he demanding that every staffer place “The Answer is No!” on every door of his office, Christie was still grappling with a growing exodus of residents to Pennsylvania or the South. He toyed with the notion of climate change. He led the charge to toughen gun sanctions, in spite of empirical, historical and anecdotal evidence which disparages any pretended benefits of gun control. What is Governor Christie thinking? The voters in New Jersey want gun control, so he shoots in their direction, accommodating their ignorance. Now he has declared a special election one month before his general election to fill a suddenly vacated US Senate Seat (RIP WWII veteran Frank Lautenberg). $21 million more down the drain for an election that will shore up his Jersey shore chances without shoring up support for his conservative credentials or his party in Washington.
Then there’s US Senator Kelly Ayotte (R-New Hampshire), who voted against the Toomey-Manchin gun background check compromise, heeding her core convictions, or the court of opinion in her home state. Now she is back-peddling on proclaimed opposition to the Gang of Eight’s immigration proposal. The same conservatives who lauded her support for the Second Amendment now condemn her flinching support for an amnesty-on-delivery that would make Ronald Reagan look like the border enforcer that he never was (before “Iran-Contra”, there was the Simpson-Mizzoli compromise, legalization of illegal immigration with no border control).
Looking beyond “imperfect” Ayotte, US Senator Pat Toomey has moved away from social conservatism, recognizing that his bluer constituency rethink reelecting him in 2016. Fellow senator Joe Manchin has shifted with his party, not his state, in supporting ObamaCare, then expanded background checks. In the name of “getting along to go along”, their respective constituents are not so happy to go along nor respect their representatives’ choices.
As former House Rep candidate Mia Love (R-Utah) shared, Americans need to think less “Democrat vs. Republican”, and more “States vs. Washington.” Within those taut dynamics, voters need to think less about voting for people whom they can trust, but trust themselves as little as possible to the people whom they vote for. Any politician, however committed, will also be calculating their reelection chances. Even crypto-anarcho-libertarian House Rep Ron Paul (R-Texas) was guilty of sending pork back to his home district.
Human beings are flawed; politicians more so. These flaws will not flee away by electing “the right people.” To minimize the flawed, disappointing leadership in this country, “We the People” should place as little power as possible in flawed hands in the first place.
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