Logic’s End

Viewing ourselves as a nation of individuals, it’s easy to feel like we have nothing in common. Yet, with a little effort it’s truly remarkable to discover just how much we all have to talk about. When was the last time you walked into a bar or a coffee shop and struck up a conversation with a random stranger, even if it lasted for just a few minutes?

Back when I graduated High School in Pennsylvania, which really wasn’t all that long ago, I lived about 45 minutes from the nearest shopping mall in any direction. Doing something as simple as stopping in for gas meant that you were likely to run into someone you knew. Casual conversation was just a natural part of life, and I took it for granted. Then I grew up.

I went through a phase that I believe many people have shared with me at some point. It felt impossible to relate to people. Then a strange thing happened. I ran into a professor at RIT who gave me some sage advice: “You’d be surprised at how much you have to talk about with anyone” and “Get a vice, try safe one like coffee since cigarettes are on their way out now!” The coffee worked, and the rest followed. Then I read Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America. Tocqueville defines, in 1835, the American predicament better than anyone I’ve ever read:

In the United States, the majority undertakes to supply a multitude of ready-made opinions for the use of individuals, who are thus relieved from the necessity of forming opinions of their own.

Thus in our naivety, many of us perceive ourselves as incompatible individuals, quickly latching on to a subset of the veritable mass of prescribed opinions. It’s no wonder so many of us have a hard time building relationships at work or in leisure (myself included as a work in progress). If universal truths do exist, they’ll be found and strengthened by discussing our thoughts, establishing a common ground, forming better opinions, and for God’s sake being political. One could call that community life. That doesn’t mean discussing democrat vs republican party platform rhetoric; to me it means discussing the human condition, contemplating great questions!  Such is my lifelong battle against mainstream relativism.

When one thinks about the definition of a Senator as an elected representative of the people of a State, despite the original Constitutional definition, the distinction implies a serious responsibility and commitment to those people. To be even more specific: the people who elected said Senator. Nonetheless, yesterday marked another step toward a governing tribunal with fewer ties to the people.

In the modern day Congress, the Senate in particular, incumbency protection is the number one goal for those aspiring to become career congressmen. In large part, that protection is achieved through constituent services. If you answer enough angry emails and letters, and maybe if you build a bridge in your home State or town, you’ve done your part. The vast majority of uninformed voters seem to be satisfied with money and lip service so long as their congressman doesn’t do anything crazy.

Thus, the problem of increasingly poor representation is equally the fault of the congressmen and the people he or she represents. After all, it is the people’s civic duty to be informed, involved, and to vote in their political process for the representatives that best match their interests, not just their wallets. So how then has Senator Arlen Specter’s party switch run afoul of the political principles and processes of the nation?

Specter claims to have switched because of a re-alignment of his political philosophy, citing such things as a loss of Republican control in the Congress and the Presidency and some 200,000 Republican voters in Pennsylvania who supposedly voted Democrat in the Presidential election. Even if that were the truth, in my opinion Specter should resign and run again for re-election as a Democrat if he feels so strongly about his new found principles. 

 See what Specter fails to mention, whether he realizes it or not, is that votes in a Presidential election are not the same as votes in a Senatorial election. In 2008 there was no Senate race in Pennsylvania. People who switch parties to vote Democrat in a Presidential race might well be the same people who voted along party lines as Republicans in Senate races years before and might well be likely to vote that way again. Such is the theory of ordered constituencies.

A Senator who switches parties mid-term is essentially saying to voters that their votes in the last Senate election that he or she ran in do not matter. At best the Senator is saying that he knows better than the people where their principles truly lie. Perhaps, however, the Senator is suggesting that the people’s principles and beliefs when they voted for him are trumped by his own. In any case, it doesn’t matter where the Senator bases his decision. It doesn’t matter if the switch from Democrat to Republican or Republican to Democrat. The Senator no longer represents the people that elected him, and he should, in good faith and service, resign.

Specter shows no signs of pursuing the route of resignation. Moreover, few are willing to call for his resignation and replacement. What Specter did was identify a shift in power in a Democratic direction for Pennsylvania and surrounding States. In an underhanded move to secure his career Senatorial seat, he has switched parties mid-term. With any luck, the voters can prove him wrong, whether in the Democratic primary or the State election, and show him that in 2010 he’s no longer fit to represent and serve the best interests the people of Pennsylvania.