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Imagine you buy a book. The cover and blurb offer an interesting story. You buy the book and really enjoy it. However, two-thirds of the way through, you find the story just ends and the rest of the pages are blank. You would feel cheated. You bought a book with the inherent promise the book would be complete. It is the minimum expectation, really.
When I agreed to run for President of my professional organization, the LPCA of GA, I was told it was a three-year commitment. I am coming to the end of that this June. The inherent promise to the organization and its members whose votes I solicited was that I would serve the three years. The President before me almost died during her first year. She ended up serving all three years. While my terms have not been that bad, I have paid a price to do this. I pay it gladly, but it is still there.
When someone puts himself out there to represent the People, he has an obligation to serve. He agreed to it. Outside of failing health (FDR should not have run again) there really is no reason to shirk that responsibility. I include running for another office in this, but I understand why that happens. Still, I do not consider that as egregious as quitting because things got too hard. Certainly, timing your leaving to ensure the people you represent cannot get new representation is just spite.
George Washington came out of retirement to take on the job of President , served two terms to set our nation on its path, and most scholars will say the stress of this shortened his life. That is servant-leadership.
As voters, we have the very reasonable expectation that the person who runs for election fulfills his promise to serve out his term. To shirk that responsibility is an act of selfishness. If you are not willing to serve our your term, don't put yourself forward for it. Indeed, we have a right to demand people live up to that promise.
Discussion (99)
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Obviously life throws all of us curve balls which, as mere humans, we cannot foresee. With that being said, I agree with you. A person running for office accepts responsibility for fulfilling their commitment if elected.
Yes. Things can come up.
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Representatives Chris Stuart (UT), Kevin McCarthy (CA), Bill Johnson (OH), Ken Buck (CO), and Mike Gallagher (WI) deserve our close scrutiny. There ought to be a cost for breaking a public trust.
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There are things that can’t be written into law, or regulation. They are things that must be able to ascribed to what we generally call “character”. If we have a common understanding and agreement of what constitutes good character, then we can have a workable culture. They are the capacity for and respect for things like integrity, shame, seemliness, honesty, consistency.
This also applies to a nation as well. We can have a National character. It is what one means when one says “I am a proud American”. (Or German, or Swede, or whatever.) It means “I adhere and aspire to these values”.
Very difficult to maintain these unspoken yet vital qualities in a people when you purposely mix so many different cultures together and just hope for the best. You end up having to give everybody a pass on everything so you don’t hurt anyones feelings, or whatever, and instead try to clumsily write virtuous behavior down in law somehow.
We are doomed.
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It's not about anything as lofty as public trust so much, I don't think. It false advertising. It's fraud, whether it's legal or not. If you had declared when you were running that you were only going to serve out 18 months of your term, you probably wouldn't have gotten elected. Or if you said that you'd faithfully execute your office unless something better comes along, you probably wouldn't have gotten elected in the first place.
And come on, we all know this is all planned and strategized to put the House under anti-Trump control and somehow vote to bar him from the ballots or from office.
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