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By its very nature, the political process motivates citizens to form opinions on a number of issues. Almost any matter has the potential to become a “hot potato” if a significant number of people—or the government itself—wish to make it one.
Whether public opinion is regarded as a constructive or a destructive force in a “free” republic, there are few politicians who are prepared to suggest “in public” that government should ignore it. Those who wield power too often retreat to divergent posturing behind “closed” doors …or, at least they used to. Today’s contemptible power mongers rather enjoy their invective belligerence.
Political scientists tend to agree, public opinion rarely influences the details of most government policies; however, elected officials usually struggle to avoid decisions they believe will be widely unpopular.
Bend an ear to the word on the street –at a local watering hole, in the narrow isle of a grocery store or while pumping petrol at a station– and you’ll find unguarded public opinion is rampant when leadership appears to be “taking us in the wrong direction.”
Public opinion scholars, Lawrence R. Jacobs and Robert Y. Shapiro, assert that most politicians tend to respond to public opinion in cynical ways. If they choose to give any credence to public opinion at all, a significant number use public opinion research to manipulate the public rather than to act on the public’s behalf.
Consider Thomas Jefferson’s thoughts on the subject of public opinion. Writing from Paris January 16, 1787, to fellow Virginian statesman
Edward Carrington, a lieutenant colonel in the Continental Army who became Virginia’s delegate to the Continental Congress from 1786 to 1788. His most notable achievement, however, was serving as the foreman of the jury that acquitted Aaron Burr of treason.
Jefferson writes …
“I am persuaded myself that the good sense of the people will always be found to be the best army. They may be led astray for a moment but will soon correct themselves. The people are the only censors of their governors.”
Jefferson further exhorts …
“Cherish therefore the spirit of our people, and keep alive their attention. If once they become inattentive to the public affairs, you and I, and Congress, and Assemblies, judges and governors shall all become wolves. It seems to be the law of our general nature, in spite of individual exceptions; and experience declares that man is the only animal which devours his own kind …”
This rigidly self-controlled Virginia gentleman clearly understood the principle of healthy republics needing informed citizens.
Ideologues of the left and right, without regard for Jefferson’s “understood principle,” make no effort to conceal their yearning for a day when public officials would no longer be scrutinized. When they can willfully satiate their ravenous appetite for unqualified control over our lives.
Gene Policinsk, chief operating officer of the Newseum Institute, a founding editor of USA Today and executive producer of the public television program “Speaking Freely,” concluded, regarding Jefferson’s comments:
“When Thomas Jefferson made his observation in 1787, he made two assumptions:
One, that there would be newspapers. And two, that those papers would contain both a critical mass of information that citizens of a democracy would use in governing themselves and serve as a check and balance on the power and reach of government itself.”
More than two centuries later, Jefferson’s anticipated “check’s and balances,” is nonexistent.
“The people I distrust most are those who want to improve our lives but have only one course of action.” -Frank Herbert, former American science fiction writer best known for the novel Dune and its five sequels.
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