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Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
What I meant about "expressing" is the Congress is talking a lot but not doing anything to actually constrain the President's freedom to act as he sees fit.
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Its early yet.
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Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
And the President certainly doesn't care about what people think, since neither he nor Cheney are running in '08.
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He's got lots of party pressures too.
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Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
If anything, we have policy too divorced from politics, not captured by it.
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Under Bush, on some issue, perhaps so, which could be why it took four years and an election loss to force a serious reassessment. But in general, I disagree.
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Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
It's a peculiarly Beltwayish view that thinks that too much concern for what voters think will produce bad results, as if politicians can be trusted to formulate policy if they are just left alone to do as they will. Some will. Others will be corrupt, or stupid, or misguided.
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Nope. A good number of the Founding Fathers thought that way, long before there was a Beltway. It is really more of an "elitist" view, which has considerable merit.
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Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
As in free markets, the accountability drives better results, in general.
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Of course, but that doesn't mean a politician should necessarily do what the constituency wants.
S_A_M
