Unaccountable

With a Middle East war raging that supposedly no one can stop, and an Administration that simply refuses to obey the law, Davis Broder calls for even less accountability in Washington, D.C.:

A particularly virulent strain of populism has made official Washington altogether too responsive to public opinion.

...In today's Washington, a badly weakened president and a dangerously compliant congressional leadership are no match for the power of public opinion -- magnified and sometimes exaggerated by modern communications and interest group pressure.

...The collapse of the immigration reform bill in the Senate last month means that the broken border system, which allows a continuing flood of illegal immigrants to enter the United States with no hope of attaining the responsibilities and privileges of citizenship, will continue for at least two more years. No one is talking of reviving the effort until after the 2008 election installs a new president and Congress.

With all its shortcomings, the defeated legislation offered some prospect of improving at least some aspects of that broken system. But it was buried by an avalanche of phone calls to the Capitol from good citizens decrying what they had been told on many talk radio stations and by some conservative politicians: that it was an amnesty bill.

...The "fast-track" process, in which Congress casts only an up-or-down vote on trade deals negotiated with other countries, has been the key to a vast expansion in world trade. But the resulting trade agreements have run into populist protests from labor and liberal groups that blame them for the loss of U.S. manufacturing jobs.

...I think labor and the environmentalists have made a good case for including their protections in these trade deals. But ending the president's negotiating authority will only do our country damage. "America needs to remain open for business to the 95 percent of the world's consumers living outside the United States," said U.S. Trade Representative Susan Schwab. And she is right.

The point is pretty basic. Politicians are wise to heed what people want. But they also have an obligation to weigh for themselves what the country needs. In today's Washington, the "wants" of people count far more heavily than the nation's needs.

You can win elections by promising people what they want. But you win your place in history by doing what the country needs done.