Trust and (IN)Security

Professor J,

Okay, clearly I didn't have anything brilliant by yesterday. That may have been expecting too much, now that I think about it. ;)

Now. Let's get back to your economy/national security post from a couple of weeks ago. I agree to a point, but couldn't the current situation be put to rights if we had a group of people in charge who could listen, understand, find common ground, compromise, and take hard action? I'm thinking that beyond the economy, our inability to find solutions is an even worse problem. And our inability to both speak and hear the hard truth. Politicians posture for the folks back home. They stick to ridiculous lines of thought even when evidence to the contrary emerges and is presented.

That can seem frustrating at times but then a question arises:What is the elected official's moral obligation? Is it to keep promises made while on the campaign trail, or to listen and change his/her vote if they feel it's the right thing to do? I'm assuming here that "the right thing" is more than just the politically expedient thing. People voted for a representative to follow a particular line of thinking. They assume (often wrongly) he/she will keep those campaign promises and vote accordingly on issues.

Allowing your rep to vote their conscience, would mean putting great trust in the character of the person. Considering some of the things we've seen them do and the corrupting nature of power in general, it is hard to judge correctly the motives for their actions. I think if we thought we could trust them we would be willing to give them more flexibility in changing their minds on major issues.

And this is how we feel about the people from "our" party or "our" candidates. If we have little faith that the people we send to the Hill, as well as our state legislatures can reliably do the right thing, those feelings are usually nonexistent for those on the other side of the aisle. They've been demonized to such a point that we can only assume they are full of evil intent when they disagree with "our" side. 

I'd say that most voters have little confidence that their congressman or senator is beyond corruption, has a long term vision for the area in which their constituents live, or think about much more than how the next vote will be used by their opponent in the next election. The dismal approval ratings that we consistently see when people are polled, shows just how low the average person's opinion of elected officials is.

Maybe our trust deficit is the biggest security issue of all.