George Will -- What's wrong with the establishment

This morning on This Week, George Will dismissed the Sestak controversy as business as usual, finding nothing wrong with the adminstration offering Joe Sestak a position to not enter the Pennsylvania senate primary. First of all, I disagree, and here's why -- although the president might be considered the leader of the Democrat Party, he's the president and as president no such official position as head of the Democrat Party exists. As president, an individual has powers which should be limited because his/her interests might be at odds with, say, the voters of Pennsylvania. Since the president's agenda can be at odds with Pennsylvania voters, the president should not be able to use the power of the president's office in any congressional election to change the outcome, except through campaigning and verbal persuasion. Offering a candidate something of value to not run in an election is going too far to influence the outcome, because it's not based on the persuasion of ideas and merit, but political power and bribery.

All the guests at the roundtable discussion were of the same mind, that nothing inappropriate happened, but then they went on to undermine their position. They laughingly agreed on the delicious irony that if the administration had had its way, the Democrats would have lost the general election because Specter was weaker than they had expected. However, this is exactly why the president shouldn't interfere in a material way in congressional elections, because if the bribe had worked, the Democrat voters of Pennsylvania would have been harmed by the manipulations. A president might want a certain senator elected to help support an administration's pet agenda that might not necessarily be good for the state the senator represents, so it's best to let the voters of the state decide based on candidates running -- if one candidate is removed by a bribe, then it narrows the choices and thwarts the voters desires for the state in which they live, and the outcome could be that a senator is elected who might help the administration's agenda but is not the best representative of the state in question. Or, as they all agreed on, the bribe might backfire and the other party might win, because the senator selected by the adminsitration, as the case with Specter, is a dud who can't win.

George Will, a thinker I once admired because of his sharp intelligence and good common sense, has been in Washington, D. C. too long, and he represents what's wrong with the establishment. These men and women of the political class have lost sight of what representation means, and they are too caught up in the political game. The call for limitations on power addresses situations like the Sestak bribery attempt. George Will needs to step back from the cocktail scene and get a grip.