The L.A. Times has a story today saying that the timing of the vote on war in Iraq from October 2002 put political pressure on the Democrats to vote for the war right before the congressional elections in November. There are two implications to this point: that Bush timed the vote for maximum political effect and that the Democrats made a vote on whether or not to go to war based on political calculations. Well, as I remember it (I don't have time to research it now, but would welcome a link to someone more enterprising than I), the Democrats were demanding that Bush submit the issue to Congress for a vote and when he actually did so, they started complaining that he was politicizing the question.

But even so, isn't that what our elected representatives should do? Take a controversial vote before the election so their constituents can decide whether they agree or disagree with their representatives? Why should the ability of the electorate to vote against a representative according to that politician's decision on the most important vote that that person could possibly make? Why should such an important question have been done after the people had voted?

And, if a representative feels that he needed to vote contrary to the wishes of his constituents, he can take comfort in having followed the advice of Edmund Burke.

To deliver an opinion, is the right of all men; that of constituents is a weighty and respectable opinion, which a representative ought always to rejoice to hear; and which he ought always most seriously to consider. But authoritative instructions; mandates issued, which the member is bound blindly and implicitly to obey, to vote, and to argue for, though contrary to the clearest conviction of his judgment and conscience,--these are things utterly unknown to the laws of this land, and which arise from a fundamental mistake of the whole order and tenor of our constitution.