Divining the will of the people

Years ago I was walking with a lobbyist in the state Capitol building in Olympia when we ran into political gridlock.

It was the people. So many citizens were there to pitch their legislators on this or that project that it became physically impossible to get from one meeting chamber to another.

Cracked the lobbyist: "If we could just get the people out of here then we could do the people's work."

A good joke, I thought at the time. But lately I've wondered if there's a shade more truth to it than laughs.

Have you noticed how the all the talk of politics these days is about the "will of the people?" And how the talk is mostly a substitute for doing anything?

Exhibit A is national health-care reform. And my own newspaper.

"The people have spoken," The Seattle Times declared the other day on our editorial page. The people apparently spoke that they do not want health-care reform — not now, not in any of these forms — and so the issue should be scrapped.

Now, I am a people. Based on your phone calls over the years, I'd hazard at least some of you are people, too. I haven't voted on health reform, or what kind I might want. I haven't been asked. Have you?

There haven't been any votes, but there are polls — and it's true they say health reform is a stinker. But for each one that says it's unpopular because it's a socialist takeover there's another that says it's because it isn't socialistic enough. (The latest: A Research 2000 poll released Friday said 65 percent of Washington state voters dislike the current bills because they want the liberal "public option" insurance plan, versus only 28 percent who don't.)

So what is the true will of the people? Who knows? I'd guess opinions are as complex as the health system itself. Just taking one of these people — myself — I honestly can't say what should be done to fix the insurance system. I do think they should keep trying to fix it.

This same quest for the "will of the people" is dominating Olympia right now. Because Democrats in the Legislature have repealed Tim Eyman's Initiative 960, which voters approved in 2007 by a 51 percent vote.

"Who decides the will of the people?" said Senate Majority Leader Lisa Brown, D-Spokane, after critics charged it was arrogant of her to overturn a citizen initiative.

Her point is that divining the public's mood at any given time is a dicey art. Do voters today want to keep Initiative 960's tax-raising limitations even if it means, say, suspending a class-size reduction program (which was approved by even more voters, a whopping 72 percent of them, back in 2000)?

Again, who knows? These are the real questions confronting Olympia. But we the people have never been asked to answer them.

Nor should we be. The whole setup of government here is that we hire them to govern with our consent. If we don't like what they do, we fire them. (Or hire Eyman to run another initiative!) It's that way precisely so they answer to us, but don't tilt like weather vanes with every one of our gusts.

What I'm saying goes back to that lobbyist's joke. Maybe "the will of the people" is a fantasy. Not our concerns, which are real. But the founders understood the country would be so diverse and unruly it would often lack a coherent collective will. So as elitist as it may sound, they expected the leaders to actually lead.

Remember when Democrats crushed Republicans in the 2006 election, mostly due to the Iraq war, and then-President Bush responded by doing exactly the opposite of what the people thought he should do? He ordered a troop surge.

Bush made colossal mistakes, but he was right on that one. Recently the writer Thomas Ricks, who was so critical of the entire Iraq misadventure he titled his book about it "Fiasco," said that turned out to be Bush's finest moment.

Politicians should just do what they think is right.

They'll hear from us people in November if they weren't.

Danny Westneat's column appears Wednesday and Sunday. Reach him at 206-464-2086 or dwestneat@seattletimes.com.