Really? Don't we deserve better representation in this country?

Dear James, Daniel and Emily,

And I am talking about the President now too.  Not only has Congress managed to totally screw up what should have been a splendid 2 year run, but when we elected a man who seemed to be a splendid speaker who was capable of bringing out the 'better angels' in all of us I thought we elected a fighter.  Instead we are looking at not only another couple of years of financial distress and a chance of worsening conditions.  And the very representatives we elected have gravely disappointed us all.

I keep harping on the word representatives because I do want to use this post to bring up a point that a lot of people seem to forget, particularly the people in my home town.  We live in a Representative Democracy, not a pure Democracy.  We as ctitizens choose people to represent us, doing so with elections.  We then trust those we elect to do what we sent them to whatever location they are governing from to do, be it City Hall to Congress and the White House.  This is not a pure democracy, and government should not be treated that way by our representatives.  Instead our elected representatives should do their job and govern, and if they do their job the right way and the way the people who elected want they can then get elected again.  No part of that process says every decision should be made by popular vote.  And yet the last 2 years every major policy decision has been treated like a referendum, with our representatives acting that way.

I know that at times these elected representatives do things that are bad, or corrupt.  We see that all too often at our local level.  Which just feeds the monster that says everything fiscal should be handled withe a referendum vote.  But even when that happens there are options/alternatives to removing the representatives, it doesn't mean throw out the baby with the bathwater.

To bring this back to current events, my hope and dream is that the media could get away from the constant polling and opinion journalism and back to reporting facts.  And in this realm of solely facts our elected representatives could do the job they are elected to do, and have the courage to do the right thing.  Because I think that if my representative did the right thing, voted for a bill, or introduced a bill, or in the case of an executive signed a bill or made a decision that helped me, my family and community I really wouldn't care what party they belonged to.  Unfortunately that's a dream, the reality is that politicians in this day and age, even those who know they are on the way out, still govern by the popular opinion of the moment, even if that opinion is ill informed, and swayed by opinion makers and demagogues without any real responsibility. 

The result is you get what we have now, a President who says that in the face of worsening economic news, and the very obvious need for more government help, that the best thing to do is cut the deficit and spending.  Ridiculous!  Worrying about the deficit when the economy is in shambles due to a lack of demand for products is just irresponsible government.  The deficit can be shrunk, when the economy improves and among other things revenue increases and we reduce our spending on wars most people don't want or think are necessary.  And this is a classic case of a representative governing by media and poll results, the President would toughen up, and govern, and get Congress to do the same thing instead of playing to the media things would get done.