Voting Your Conscience

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Voting Your Conscience

By Erv Bobo
Apr. 25, 2008

Senator Barak Obama, recently quoted in National Review Online:

“I also don’t oppose all trade deals. I voted for two of them because they have the worker and environmental agreements I believe in. Some of you disagreed with me on this but I did what I thought was right.”

Forget, if you can, the fact that Senator Obama speaks with a forked tongue about the NAFTA trade agreement and what he intends to do about it. Forget also the numerous other recent cases of his having been “misinterpreted” whenever he opens his mouth. In fact, forget Obama completely and focus on the last sentence in that quote.

“Some of you disagreed with me on this but I did what I thought was right.”

Other politicians have often said similar things. Usually, they say they “voted their conscience.”

Now it is nice to think – if only in that moment before wild laughter leaves us prostrate – that politicians have consciences. (It is even nice to think they are sometimes conscious, but that’s a future opinion piece.)

But why should anyone respect them or excuse them for voting according to the – purported – still, small voice inside? That’s not why they were elected.

So forget Obama and all the other senators and representatives currently doing nothing and let’s imagine we have one Senator Starr from the fictional city of Zenith in the great state of Winnemac (thanks to the ghost of Sinclair Lewis.)

As a senator, Starr is committed to serving all the people in his state, to take their wants and needs to Washington and to do all he can to fulfill those wants and needs. (We are NOT going to consider the man in West Zenith who wants a government grant that will allow him to quit his job as dogcatcher and embark on a five-year study of the mating habits of inchworms. He’ll get that with or without our man.) Starr won his office with 51% of the vote and the question now is this: whom does he represent?

Does he represent only those who voted for him? After all, they are the ones who believed in him (or disbelieved his opponent to a greater degree) and believed in the promises he made during his campaign.

More, these are the ones who, if satisfied, are likely to re-elect him again and again. (Has anyone ever figured out why Senators Kennedy and Kerry are continually re-elected? Surely the good people of Massachusetts don’t really think these are the best men to represent their state on the national stage.)

But remember, Starr was elected to represent ALL the people in his state. Does he, then, have an obligation to consider the wants and needs of the 49% who voted for the other guy?

Or does he just say “To hell with them all” or “A plague on both your houses” and vote the way he damn well pleases which is - as he later claims - “his conscience”?

Senators and representatives have no right to “vote their conscience”. That is an act of emotion.

Let’s simplify: 51% of the people voted for Starr because they agree with his stated stance on abortion. 49% voted for his opponent because they do not agree with Starr’s stance. Now, it could be that Starr is unalterably opposed to abortion or it could be that he is completely comfortable with the idea that it is a woman’s right to choose. Makes no difference here. What does matter is that Starr must find a way to do a balancing act, to frame some law that will leave everyone in the state with the feeling that they at least got something and that they gave up almost nothing.

But he must arrive at his conclusion through careful deliberation. He must think about how his solution affects those who voted for him as well as those who didn’t. Since he is on the national stage, he must also think about how his decision affects people who are not his constituents. More, he must think on the ramifications for the future because the law he votes on today may remain the law for the next twenty, thirty, fifty years, affecting people who may never hear of him.

Vote your conscience, Senator Starr? To paraphrase a past vice-president, your conscience isn’t worth a bucket of warm spit when it comes to making (or defeating) laws for our country.

Rather than tell me you have a conscience, why not try to convince me that you are a deliberate man, that you think things through, consider all the ramifications and then vote as you think your constituents and non-constituents will best be served by your vote?

Case in point: Recently Barak Obama (damn it! There he is again!) stated that he would like to outlaw the sale of all firearms within five miles of every school and every park.

(This little pastiche is probably fashioned after the “drug-free” zones around many schools and it is just as stupid. Why not make the entire town – hell, the entire state – a drug-free zone?)

Obviously, Obama is thinking of the killings at places like Columbine High but doesn’t he realize most students are mobile? Doesn’t he realize that it is no big thing to hop in the car, go down the road a piece to buy a piece and then drive back to the school?

Or maybe he does realize it and, crafty soul that he is, also realizes that – with such a law on the books – the ONLY place ANYONE can EVER buy a gun is in the middle of a cornfield in Nebraska.

Well thought out, Senator Obama. Very deliberative. Got your conscience working, I see.

But, once again, your brain and your mouth are out of sync.

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About the author: Erv Bobo is a free-lance author. His current books THE VELVET BRAND, THE CHEYENNE BRAND and WESTERN STAR are currently available at Lulu.com.

Email: Dasher1945@aol.com

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