Because sometimes that one vote is enough to negate anything good you did that entire session. Put another way, say the leading citizen in a small town has always been a good citizen, helping with all the local charity events, raising money for the Scouts, the American Cancer Society, spearheading the drive to get a no-kill animal shelter, whatever.
Then one day you open the local paper and find that he was arrested the night before for skimming so much money from the local public utility that the long-term projections indicated that you may well have to pay more for your utilities sometime in the future, or the public utility would become bankrupt.
Do you say “should he really be judged just on that one act? Shouldn’t we be looking at everything he’s done?”Your comparison isn’t fair. In your example, you learn that the citizen has been involved in criminal activity. Are you claiming that the Governor and Legislators have committed a crime? I don’t think you’re saying that.
So then this is just a matter of a “bad vote.” You disagree - strongly - with your Legislator and Governor.
OK, then what?
Well, I still say that politicians shouldn’t be defined on one vote or one issue.
Take a look at the actual voting record of your favorite politician. I can remember being so proud that Reagan was our President, yet sometimes I was horrified at some of his individual policies. You’re not going to agree with anyone all the time, not with your spouse, not with your best friend, and certainly not with an elected official.
I guess I could have said that he took his 16 year old daughter for an abortion (entirely legal as he’s her father and I’m not assuming the pregnancy is the result of incest) but I thought that it might be a little over-the-top. Or that he was hiring all his bimbo girlfriends and that their mis-management of the utility would cause you to have to pay more for your utilities in the future, while they suffered no consequences.
But to be honest, Trollfessor, I believe that overtaxing our citizens is a crime. And I do believe that the vote on this bill will require an increase in taxes at some point in the future, as will the unfunded accrued liabilities. Of course, all we could do is throw a little money on that problem rather than doing what every financial adviser in the private sector would tell you to do--pay off your debt before incurring new expenses. And the automatic increase year-after-year means we are going to be incurring new expenses.
I could be wrong. Jindal/Tucker/Chaisson might bankrupt the state before the unfunded accrued liabilities or the legislative raise do. It’s entirely possible.
And I never said that I (or anyone else) was going to agree 100% with anyone else. Only that sometimes the disagreement is so serious that it trumps all else, and might even require the termination of the relationship. Perhaps infidelity is that issue for some. We’ve certainly heard lots of calls for the resignation of the Junior Senator from Louisiana over that issue, haven’t we?
The reverse is true, too. Sometimes there is an issue so important to some people that it trumps all else. For an excellent illustration of that look at the NRA (as an organization, there are certainly individual members who have other issues that are more important to them than the gun issues).