That same confusion and ambivalence appears to characterize American’s feelings about government in general. PA Times, a monthly publication of the American Society for Public Administration, reported that 79 percent of Americans say they would encourage young people to work for the federal government. This finding came out of a George Washington University Battleground Poll, conducted in July.
Yet, according to the same poll, only 21 percent of the respondents had a great deal or a lot of confidence in federal civilian employees.
But before getting too discouraged about government, big business, newspapers, and HMOs fared as badly or worse in a similar poll conducted by Gallup in June, according to PA Times. In June, Gallup asked a similar question about confidence in employees of several professions. Among the following institutions, the level of confidence held by respondants was:
Newspapers (25 percent), TV news (23 percent), banks (22 percent), organized labor (19 percent), HMOs (18 percent), Congress (17 percent), and big business (16 percent). On the other end of the spectrum were the military (82 percent), small business (67 percent), the police (59 percent), and organized religion (52 percent).
The question Gallup asked was: “Thinking about the civilian employees of the federal government and your view of them, would you say that you have a great deal of confidence, a lot of confidence, some confidence, or very little confidence in these employees?” The George Washington University poll excluded the military, which tends to draw higher public confidence than other institutions.
This type of question and the responses to it illustrate some inherent weaknesses in polling. People’s feelings and beliefs about these issues are clearly mixed. They are based on presumptions that may not always be examined or questioned. On the one hand, the George Washington University poll shows that people have little confidence in the federal workforce. Yet, they endorse it as a profession for young people.
Similarly, polls, such as the Gallup poll, show people hold Congress in the lowest esteem among practially all institutions. Yet, late last month, we saw an outpouring of public emotion at the passing of Senator Ted Kennedy, albeit a famous and unusually productive member of Congress.
Like statistics, polls can be made to say just about whatever you want them to. We should pay far less attention to them than we do.
Phone calls and emails? Rallies? Blogs? Town Hall meetings? Voting? Nothing? Lobbyists? Campaign contributors?
I support people not because I expect them to govern by popularity contest, but because I expect them to think, study, and come to conclusions and have the integrity and character to fight for their conclusions whether or not I agree.
Not sure why that stuff landed in my title. Oh well.
Another nail in the coffin for the PO. I’m sure more nails will be needed but the trend is going in the “down” direction…
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the media pays too much attention to polls, which show the public is ambivalent about issues such as health care reform. The public is ambivalent because they rely on the media to tell them how they feel. Members of Congress then get calls from their ambivalent constituents, immediately panic, and abandon their previous positions on these issues. The media then reports that members of Congress are abandoning their positions and the public loses all remaining respect for their representatives in Congress. It’s an endless, vicious cycle.
…but also research and their own judgement. Edmund Burke said it best:
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p>”…it ought to be the happiness and glory of a representative to live in the strictest union, the closest correspondence, and the most unreserved communication with his constituents. Their wishes ought to have great weight with him; their opinion, high respect; their business, unremitted attention. It is his duty to sacrifice his repose, his pleasures, his satisfactions, to theirs; and above all, ever, and in all cases, to prefer their interest to his own. But his unbiassed opinion, his mature judgment, his enlightened conscience, he ought not to sacrifice to you, to any man, or to any set of men living. These he does not derive from your pleasure; no, nor from the law and the constitution. They are a trust from Providence, for the abuse of which he is deeply answerable. Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays, instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your opinion.”
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p>(BTW, I think BMG history was made today; I’m not sure Dave from Hvad has ever posted on a topic besides Fernald!)
has put his finger on the essence of representative democracy and accountability. Unfortunately, I think there are too few in Congress who follow his advice.
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p>As far as my posting about Fernald, I’m flattered to think that I could make history at BMG. But I think that if you search under my name, you’ll find many posts on other subjects.
I knew there was a reason Im writing by BA on that guy (Burke)-one of the best political speeches in the Anglo-American tradition.
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p>But sadly there is not one Congressman, Senator, or President who has the balls to say that today.
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p>Oh and after making that speech Burke was voted out-I guess the people always want to be followed even when they are clearly wrong.
We elect legislators to know what they’re doing so, to a certain extent, it does not matter what the public wants now. What matters is the future outcome that the public wants.
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p>This is a bit like the Iraq War. Maybe the public was super eager to invade in 2002. By 2006, the outcomes from that policy were clear and were bad, and the public didn’t like the Iraq invasion one bit.
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p>So if done well, health care reform will be as safe and popular as Social Security and Medicare.
That’s a pretty big sticking point for me. I have zero faith in the governments ability to do this well, should they do it. Zero. None.
The government is not a monolith. There are both competent and incompetent people in government, both good and bad people etc. Good and bad examples of bureaucracy exist in both the public and private sectors. The whole reason for the public option is that the private sector has been incapable by itself of keeping health care costs down.
The corporatist “drown it in the bathtub” fetish. They have convinced themselves that government can’t do anything as well as private enterprise can. That right there should tell you that there’s no use plying them with logic. Even if you get them to admit that gov’t does some things well, they’ll come right back and claim it can’t do well whatever is being talked about currently. When they control some part of the government, they do their level best to prove that it can’t do stuff. Things that government does passably well under Democrats become impossible tasks that result from unforeseeable events when Republicans take over.
In looking down the road towards retirement (some day) I am assuming zero dollars from Social Security. This entitlement has grown from being the stop-gap to get people by by supplementing their retirement plans to being “the” retirement plan. Over the years Congress has added more and more payouts, increasing the monthly allotments and for the last few decades increased the deposits from the working people. In a just a few years I think SS is going to crash and for my generation I’m sure a “means test” will be in place squarely punishing any prudent people who have invested in 401K plans. With similar projections about Medicare being bankrupt in a few more years I don’t know how you can say “safe” but I do agree that people on both would call it popular.
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p>I don’t think we can say government screws up everything but I do think they screw up most things.
We elect the people we do (IMO) because we want them to do what “we” want. If they don’t do what we want then we vote them out. It seems to me that most/all politicians have a number #1 goal of being reelected and they begin campaigning for reelection the moment they take office. So if they want to be reelected they will listen to their people. The throngs of pols coming back from August break are echoing the wishes of their constituents (especially the ones up for reelection), one way or another.
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p>I have commented before on this “inconsistency” with pols in that on issue A they will defend their vote as it was the “wishes of the people” (reelection) while they defend vote B on it being “the right thing to do” (buckling to DNC, their leadership or a special interest group) and if it were all about public opinion we’d just have ballots for every issue.
There are somethings I believe in so strongly (marriage equality comes to mind) that I would vote a certain way regardless of what my constituents thought. (You left out conscience, BTW, in your spin to interpret “right thing to do” as being about party, leadership, and interests.) If I don’t feel as strongly, but my constituents seem to by ratio of communications, I would probably vote as they wish. If my constituents aren’t particularly engaged then maybe I would take the opportunity to throw my vote to party, leadership or interests.
on any vitamins, suppliments or anything else you think you might need as Codex Alimentarius rolls out this December.
Watch for the end of the current ammunition shortage!
http://www.masslpa.org/node/425
I will stick that vaccine needle in your eye!