Responsibility--Part Two

Sean from The American Mind posted on the question of responsibility: A politician is selected by his constituents for his judgement. He is not a rubber stamp of the public's will. The politician shouldn't come to his decision based on opinion polls. He's in office to use his mind and mouth to do what he thinks is right. The constituents have the opportunity to judge him at election tim or if the politician is really bad by recall.

Similarly, constituents must use prudence in determining if the politician has broken a campaign promise and for what reason. The constituents have to examine whether the political, economic, or cultural environment has changed to make the promise impossible to fulfill or to drain the politician's reserve of political capital so as to make him unless in tackling other issues. Few politicians run solely on one issue. Likewise, most voters don't care only about one issue. It becomes a process of weighing the costs and benefits of addressing particular issues.

Big Ben (this week's Blog of the Week winner--sorry Jeff!) from Hammerswing75 weighs in: Conservatives owe Bush nothing because he's the employee not the boss. He made a lousy choice. He can be stubborn if he wants to, but we are not beholden to him. He needs to snap out of it. He screwed up. I don't want an apology. I want a decent nominee. If he needs to stick with this nominee for political reasons then he had better let us in on the secret. I don't care if she's a woman. Her gender means zero.

I want a jurist who respects the constitution and will use it as THE primary resource. There are millions of Americans who, if confirmed to the Supreme Court, could understand the constitution better than Breyer, Ginsburg, Stevens et al...

My take tomorrow (hopefully).