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February 12, 2006
I Like This Guy Already
I've often wondered about the balance a legislator should strike between "constituent service" and service to the nation as a whole. Although it's true that the first job of a politician is to get elected, it's always seemed true to me that members of Congress, for example, should acknowledge by their actions that they are enacting laws for governing the entire nation, not just their relatively few constituents.
Maybe I'm being overly naive: no doubt every elected official will swear that they would never be reelected if they didn't cater to their constituents' whims. Maybe...but maybe not. Perhaps we common folk don't really spend every waking minute tallying up the pork projects our elected officials are winning for us.
In his latest column, George Will profiles the delightfully irascible Oklahoma senator Tom Coburn, a rare elected official who doesn't vet his every action against his constituents' real or imagined desires. Coburn recently delivered one of the most stinging political comebacks I've heard in quite a while. Will (emphasis mine).:
Coburn is the most dangerous creature that can come to the Senate, someone simply uninterested in being popular. When Speaker Dennis Hastert defends earmarks -- spending dictated by individual legislators for specific projects -- by saying that a member of Congress knows best where a stoplight ought to be placed, Coburn, in an act of lese-majeste, responds: Members of Congress are the least qualified to make such judgments.
Recently, when a Republican colleague called to say "his constituency'' would not allow him to support Coburn on some measure, Coburn tartly told the senator that "there is not one mention in the oath (of office) of your state.'' Senators are just not talked to that way under the ponderous rituals of vanity that the Senate pretends are mere politeness.
Perfect. These people are serving a higher calling than just winning the prize for being elected. We would be well-served by having more people in Congress with Coburn's courage.
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