The day our elected officials take their marching orders from the wishes of the unwashed masses, it'll be time for me to move somewhere more hospitable.

The vast majority of people can't even find Iraq on a map, and our elected officials are supposed to defer to them with regard to our foreign policy? Hogwash.

http://news.yahoo.com/comics/uclickcomics/20080…

When was the last time a veep for a 2 term president wasn't even considered for the nomination? I know what you're thinking. So?

Elections have consequences.

Neither Cheney or Bush has ever mastered this ability, preferring to try to control opinion inside and outside their administration by punishing those who disagree or who can't put a positive spin on events.

It is correct to say that a governemnt can not rule by following popularity polls, but neither can it rule successfully over the long term by ignoring and antagonizing the citizenry. I would argue that even a dictatorrship could survive and thrive if the populace felt that their concerns and complaitnts were heard and seriously considered in the decison making of the rulers.

A shrug is the perfect symbol for this administration, and it's totally counterproductive. The best way to produce a backlash is to treat citizen concerns with disdain and antagonism.
The ultimate self interest of the US is its survival. It can't survive as a nation at war with itself, and a shrug is the best way to ensure that the internal wars will intensify. The best way to produce risky countermeasures is to disregard their underlying causes, or to call opponents un-American.

Certainly, trying to destroy the checks and balances cited in passionate defense of Cheney does not serve to optimize the survival chances of this republic.

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If Cheney (and Bush) really was concerned about winning the war on terror, then why did Cheney (and Bush) decide to give up the pursuit of bin Laden (who is a sworn enemy of the US, who DID attack us and calls for further attacks on us)? Then the Bushies attack Iraq which was castrated militarily and posed no threat to us.

It's one thing for a leader to fight the right fight even against public opinion. It's another thing for a leader to lie to us and support a war that doesn't benefit us and in fact is bleeding our military and treasury.

Furthermore why does the Bush administration say that we don't torture, but then it turns out that we do and that Bush can give the authorization to torture in the future? Our leaders are not honorable men nor do they care about the vast majority of Americans. All they want to do is give each other their no-bid contracts and protect their friends.

My point being: it is VERY important that elected representatives go against public opinion when they believe the American public is wrong.

The classic example: FDR in the run-up to WWII. If his machinations had been public knowledge, he would have faced certain impeachment. He knew — but the American public refused, according to every public opinion poll, to accept — that war with Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan was coming, and it was necessary.

FDR would have shrugged too when confronted with opposing opinion polls. Far more charmingly than Darth Cheney, and covertly and never in public (he was far more Machiavellian than Cheney) but he would most certainly have shrugged.

I recall almost the entire Democratic Southern delegation in Congress (“Dixiecrats”)voted against it…and it only passed with the support of northern Republicans.

Since African-Americans were a minority in the South, I would imagine most polls in the region would have shown a majority of public opinion disapproving of acknowledging the civil rights of those “uppity Negroes”. Certainly this was reflected in the voting on the Civil Rights Act.

The monstrous arrogance of those Yankees and Republicans violating the democratic rights of Americans in the South.

Point One: “America's self-selected, unelected Vice-President”

The Vice-Presidency is an elected constitutional office. One may argue about 2000, but Bush-Cheney were (except in the minds of rabid conspiracy theorists) elected in 2004. Bush cannot fire Cheney. Whether Robert Stein likes it or not, the Vice-President was elected!

Point Two: Mickey Edwards is typical of the only Republicans ever permitted op-eds in the NYT or the WaPo (i.e., Repubs who attack other Repubs…remember that little scandal a couple of years back when the NYT was exposed for shopping an Op-ed thesis around among senior Repubs attacking Bush, wanting someone to effectively put their name to it, with editors and reporters to “assist” in the writing).

Cheney is making a good point. Edwards is annoyed that Cheney shrugged off the polls on Iraq. Yet, contra Edwards (who implies Americans have always been against the war in Iraq) a few years ago most Americans were in favor according to the polls.

If we want a republic run by polls, one might as well toss out representative government altogether.

Periclean Athens was such a state. After Pericles died, public opinion in the assembly ran the state and the war with Sparta. A general lost a battle. The public opinion turned against him and he was executed. Then…d'oh…the public of Athens realized they had just killed their best general.

America is a republic because the founding fathers looked at systems of government that succeeded. Athens was a democracy that failed spectacularly. Rome was a republic that succeeded in its long twilight struggle with Carthage because its checks and balances held the extremes of public opinion under control. Hence, America is a republic and not a democracy.

Cheney was right.

. He was the prime proponent of the “unitary executive” which is so undemocratic that it isn't funny, as it ignores the representative branch– the Congress.