IF THE saga of Condoleeza Rice's testimony before the Sept. 11 Commission were a family sitcom, the casting might look something like this. President Bush would play the frustrated blue-collar husband who can't seem to catch a lucky break, while the talking heads of America's left would collectively assume the role of his nagging wife, complaining each episode that the president can never do anything right.
When the administration initially announced that Rice would not publicly testify under oath, it received flak for wrongly attempting to hide information behind a flimsy constitutional argument. Now that Bush has reversed his decision, many of his critics continue to berate him, attacking his move as a disingenuous instance of politicking and vote-hunting. Such an observation alone, despite its potential accuracy, is not enough to incriminate the president for an act of wrongdoing. In fact, people should favor elected officials who respond to political pressures that arise from the public's desire.
It is plain to see that the choice to have Rice testify was a so-called political one. By refusing at first to allow the testimony to take place, the Bush administration revealed what it would have ultimately preferred to do if isolated from public opinion. Only when this policy turned out to be unpopular did Bush and his aides alter their plans, hoping to boost the president's image of trustworthiness on matters of national security for the upcoming election. One administration official even admitted the political nature of the change of heart in an interview with USA Today, claiming that the move was made to counter Richard Clarke's well-publicized challenges to Bush's credibility.
Be that as it may, a close look at the nature of political motives reveals that such motives are not equivalent to corrupt or immoral ones. A person who is "political" simply seeks to gain power in matters of government and policymaking, and the way to achieve this in a representative democracy is to appeal to the people. As long as voters control the process of selecting their leaders, those leaders cannot selfishly pursue an extended stay in office without acting in accordance with what the public wants. That is to say, when the president approved Rice's testimony as a means of winning votes, he transformed the preferences of a large segment of the population into reality.
Those who believe that it is somehow lesser for politicians to do the right thing because of political pressure rather than out of their own moral character need to reexamine the basis of democratic government. The founding fathers operated under the belief that no person in office was infallible, and therefore a link between public opinion and the actions of government was necessary to prevent tyranny. The recent actions of the Bush administration are simply a continuation of this time-tested principle to the present day.
Of course, many politicians throughout the years have found ways to unfairly exploit public opinion through the art of pandering. A specific form of acting politically, pandering involves tricking the public into thinking that one is supporting its preferences by touting a popular but superficial position. If successful, this can allow a politician to accrue voter support on an inconsequential issue and divert attention away from other areas in which the public is being ignored. Pandering often takes the form of pork projects or candidate appearances at sporting events or patriotic celebrations.
In allowing Condoleeza Rice to testify, the president managed to act politically without devolving to the level of pandering. The decision was purely reactive, a response to public demand, rather than a situation the administration concocted on its own. Also, it is hard to classify compliance with the Sept. 11 Commission as a trivial issue of the type that pandering typically involves. Every U.S. citizen was affected by the tragedy of the terror attacks, and all have an interest in the Commission's goal of getting to the root of any intelligence failures that may have allowed them to happen.
For Americans today, the term political is often viewed as a dirty word that connotes greed and impurity. It may be the case that politics as we know it often consists of fancy advertising, cruel personal attacks, lies and half-truths, but the core of politicking involves finding ways to comply with public attitudes and ideas. Instead of losing faith in our politicians when they make substantive efforts to court our vote, we should seek to elect those who won't hesitate to act politically.
Chris Kiser's column appears Thursdays in The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at ckiser@cavalierdaily.com.
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