They Act Like Being Like James Garner Is A Positive Thing*
Posted by Contrarian on October 25th, 2006
As a dyed-in-the-woll independent voter I like the idea of elected officials and politicians “speaking their minds” and all that. Personalities like John McCain, Rudy Giuliani and Michael Bloomberg are hailed as straight shooters. In this worldview sometimes it seems that being a “maverick” is the best quality to which one can aspire.
On the other hand, loyal people — Rick Santorum, for example, who, while he may be a stooge, was (for a time there at least) a loyal party guy — remain unloved. While mavericks grandstand and triangulate, loyal party types do the dirty work and get the brunt of the criticism. I know Santorum is pretty conservative, but the reason he’s losing the Google battle over his name has less to do with his personal beliefs than the fact that he was the schlub who had to do the heavy lifting on that particular issue.
So that said, even as an independent voter who cares like not at all about party politics, I’m becoming more sympathetic to the notion that a broken party system is probably not a good thing**.
To this point, the Bloomberg quote I was trying to remember yesterday is here:
I have disagreed with him. We’ve even had a minor public spat over homeland security funding. Congressman Shays is an honest person. He says what he believes. And that’s what representative government should be.
Again, say what you want about how mavericks are good for politics or they’re interesting or whatever, but a maverick is about the furthest thing you can get from “representative government.” Honestly, Rick Santorum seems like a better example of representative government than the mavericks noted above.
And if this is Mayor Bloomberg’s idea of what representative government should be, then maybe we should be very wary of politicians like him making too many inroads in upcoming elections.
*Now that’s just a silly reference.
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Now Playing: Episode 355
Democrats in Denver, Republicans in St. Paul, and Iraqis in Anbar.
Links Mentioned: Robert Caro on Obama … Americans hand over Anbar … John Kerry’s surprisingly good convention speech … Sarah Palin’s governing problems
I think there are two related issues here.
First, there’s the idea that an independent voter would support a candidate who doesn’t adhere to party orthodoxy, but nonetheless best represents that voter’s viewpoint. To use Bloomberg, you may be a fiscally conservative, socially liberal New Yorker, so you vote for Bloomberg because he’s going to espouse your views, regardless of what letter follows his name.
Second, there’s the maverick idea, usually summed up by the phrase, “I may not agree with him, but at least I know where he stands.” Paul Wellstone and John McCain supporters use(d) this line. To be honest, I never had much use for this thinking. After all, if you (a) know where the candidate stands, and (b) disagree with said stands, then shouldn’t you (c) not vote for the guy?