Given Senator Obama's support for the recent travesty of a Farm Bill, (which I am assuming is true, with a later switch to "no vote" once it was clearly going to pass, though the final vote tallies show all the candidates not voting on the final bill - cowardly for all concerned, in my book) there are two possible explanations I see.
1) He really does want to change but considers support for the Farm Bill a necessary evil to get elected president, from which place change may come.
2) He's just talk, and nothing more.
If option #1 is true, then he has nothing but good intentions, but that and $4.00 will get you a gallon of gas. Personally, I suspect #2 is true. This farm bill is so embarassing that no one who supported it should deserve reelection, on the basis of being unfit for the office (disclosure: I typed that before deciding to look up who voted how from Nevada).
Representing Nevada, voting to approve the final bill:
Senate:
Ensign: Nay
Reid: Yea
House of Representatives:
Berkley: Yea
Heller: Nay
Porter: Nay
At least Nevada's Republicans were on the right side of this travesty.
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
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3 comments:
This again gets at why my interest in Obama has waned. His billing as a truth-telling change-agent is proving to be overstated.
At a substance level, he's not that special. I suppose a remaining argument for him could be that if he gets into office, he'll be such a charismatic force that he can "bring people together," and make change possible.
I'd be more likely to believe that if he'd shown that he could do so already, instead of showing that he's willing to play "politics as usual" to get himself in the position to be a change agent.
All the candidates probably didn't vote because they were on the campaign trail. If it was going to be close they probably would have come back to D.C., but as it is, there was no need.
Either way, yes, the farm bill blows large goats, but Obama's from a farm state. Which brings us to the question: is a politician obliged to follow the will of his/her constituents? Or to follow his/her judgment on what's best for the country, regardless of whether his/her constituents agree?
Don't forget, also, that the farm bill includes hunger-prevention programs such as food stamps, which no Democrats (and only a select few Republicans) want to vote against. Voting for/against the final farm bill, then, may not be the most accurate way to determine whether they're pro- or anti-ridiculous subsidies...
Probably the strongest criticism I have with George Bush's 2001-2006 presidency is that he did not veto a single bill coming out of the Republican Congress. Many of the measures in every bill were probably things he agreed with - something especially true of omnibus bills. However, there were times when a veto was most appropriate, simply because the whole thing was far too bloated.
If Obama were unable to oppose a bill as ungainly and universally despised (except by farmers) as this one, then I would not trust him to use the president's veto when a bill included a politically favored football.
There are clearly times when, despite one's support for food stamps it's important to oppose a measure containing them, because the overall bill is so very repugnant.
It's not often the editorials in the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times are on the same side of an economic proposal, but it shows the universal sentiment that the farm bill was a filthy, wallowing, shameful, election-year excess.
Who should a politician listen to? I'd say both. I think a politician should try to represent the interests of his constituents. But in doing so, there needs to be a sense of restraint, because the alternative is every politician grabbing as much as they can for their state, taxing every other state to fund it, so that everyone can come back to their constituents with a pile of money from "the federal government" (really, from taxes on everyone), which may or may not actually be bigger than the less noticeable taxes that go to pay for similar piles of money going to every other stte, too.
Everyone gets to feel like a winner, but not everyone is. Breaking the system, though, would require someone who is willing to forgo the public feeding trough - something that would go against the immediate interests of his or her constituents (as they'd still be paying for the excesses of the rest of Congress) while probably benefiting them long-term.
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