Listening

The political class of the United States tend to have one thing in common. When the public makes enough noise about something, they respond. This, of course, is not a universal. There are plenty of people who believe that the public can be unified in support of (or opposition to) something, and still be wrong, and it's likely that at least some of them will be elected to public office now and again. But, for the most part, legislatures, executives and even elected judges tend to be responsive to what they understand the public wants. After all, to do otherwise would see them voted out of office in their next election. And while some politician go that route, most simply resign their offices.

Understanding this power that the public at large possesses interferes with the carefully-cultivated victimization narrative that many members of the public have built up, even if they are loath to admit to it. That narrative, however hides on the primary problems with large-scale democracies and republics. The United States is a large place, both geographically and in terms of population; its citizens are Legion, numbering in the hundreds of millions, and we do not speak with one voice. And our governments, and the institutions that comprise them reflect that fractured reality back at us. Which means that on a personal level, government can seem remote, disinterested or even hostile, especially to those who are out of step with the general mainstream of public thought.

As much as they take the blame for things going wrong, politicians rarely lead in the commonly understood sense of the word. They posture and bluster for the television cameras because they know their supporters will see them. They hold to hard lines because they know that their base voets will back them. They spend significant portions of their time fundraising to build up massive campaign war chests because they know that unless they put themselves in the public's faces come election season, they will be ignored.

Many members of the public expect the people who are elected into government to behave as if they as individuals, who normally have such a tenuous grasp on the issues that they couldn't begin to describe them intelligently, are the only people who matter. When the public sentiment shifts away from individuals, and they representatives follow, people will accuse them of "flip-flopping" or "blowing in the political winds." When someone wants their representatives to vote with them, rather than the majority of the people they were elected to represent, they'll call them "cowards." When politicians fail to take on the task of evangelizing a certain group's priorities to people who have priorities of their own, it's "a lack of political leadership." After all, one can't please all of the people, all of the time.