In class we have been discussing civil liberties and how the government should include the public opinion when limiting the rights of their citizens. This should also be the same with war, but interestingly enough I recently came across an article in which our former Vice President Dick Cheney shared his view that it does not matter what the public thinks, that the public are in fact irrelevant and he does not care what they think. When told two-thirds of America does not support the war in Iraq his only response and a blunt one at that was, "So?". This leads to me to question our country and how our "democracy" actually works. President Bush was elected....sort of... in 2000 by an extremely slim margin. Even though over 50% of the U.S did not want him as their President, for the next 4 years he made almost every major decision for the United States. This included going into, what many now consider a bogus war in Iraq. In our system shouldn't the government take into consideration what the public views and even base their decisions off of how the public views a certain topic? Why does a man that almost half the country disagrees with get to decide that we will wage war on a country that half of America doesn't agree with? What is wrong with this picture, when a man who is supposed to be in charge of a country is only thinking about his opinion and not paying attention to all of those around him who also have very good ideas that at the very least he should consider. I find it ridiculous that in our supposedly great nation we can have leaders who don't even consider the public opinion, as Cheney says, "No. I think you cannot be blown off course by the fluctuations in the public opinion polls." However when the public polls were in favor of him and the Iraq war he used the polls to support his war. Only when the polls are against him are they irrelevant. What do you think about this issue? Do you think the president should be able to do whatever he wants?
I think that many Americans regret voting George Bush in, but there's nothing we could do about it. Perhaps it was emotional voting, we all wanted vengeance against the terrorists that lead to the deaths of thousands.
ReplyDeleteBut in terms of the President's power, I think that there are ways of managing the President's power, like a 2/3 vote in Congress, and we can only hope that Presidents don't do anything too serious. I think we can all lean on the checks and balances system we talked about during class too.