The concept of representation, in a political context, has more than one dimension. Someone elected by you might represent you by sharing some of your views, by pressing for your interests, by speaking on your behalf, and so forth. But there are other ways in which he or she doesn't represent you. If he's a he and you're a she, then he doesn't signify your gender, and it's built right into the institution of political representation that, in many respects, those who are elected will not 'represent' the people who elect them in that signifying sense. I make these obvious points merely as a preamble to commenting on two things I've read today.
1) Lionel Shriver has evidently been troubled by the 'smug, superior smirks of locals sure that all Americans are morons because they elected one'. I won't go so far as to say that people who think like this are themselves morons, but it's none too clever a thought. Shriver could just have shrugged it off as the stupidity it is. Does anyone think that all Brits are devout because, as prime minister, Tony Blair was, or that the population of this country is morose because Gordon Brown often seems to be?
2) Slightly more complicated, to me anyway, is this piece by Frank Schaeffer on John McCain's candidacy. As the father of a Marine, Schaeffer is reassured by the fact that McCain is too. He writes:
It will be easier for Americans to take the next president's inevitable call for sacrifice seriously if that president's children are in the military. We need a president who can honestly say: "We're all in this together."This would seem morally to disqualify the candidacy of anyone whose child isn't in the military. It is a rather significant restriction on the freedom to stand for public office. Not only that; Schaeffer makes it clear that he's aware of other principles it goes against: the rights of adult children to choose their careers; the fact that parents are not necessarily to blame for what their children do. Thus:
Of course, we don't have a draft. The freedom not to volunteer for the military extends to any president's children. And I don't want to suggest that politically ambitious parents should push their offspring to serve. Moreover, as a parent I'd hate to be blamed for everything my children do or don't do.But, acknowledging these points, he also goes back - or halfway back - on them:
That said, all parents - including presidents and potential presidents - are free to encourage or discourage their children to volunteer. And voters have every right to demand an especially high standard of example-setting from those claiming they are fit to lead our country in wartime.Here it is again, the saying and the going back:
There's nothing wrong with Chelsea Clinton and the Romney sons making a buck or boosting their academic credentials instead of serving their country - unless Hillary Clinton and Mitt Romney are going to ask other people's equally gifted children to serve. Do their children's decisions make Romney and Clinton unfit to be president? No. But these strong-on-defense candidates would be more credible if their children were more open to military service.There's a certain amount of having it both ways here. And why confine the thing to the children of the president in any case? Isn't the logical conclusion of this reasoning that the voters of any country willing to go to war should be willing to go to war themselves, or if they're not of an age to, to send their children?