For some years now, editorialists have been lamenting that elected officials who know better defer to the irrational beliefs of their constituents instead of saying and doing what they know to be right and educating the voters. Whether they know it or not, the pundits are channeling the ideas of conservative thinker Edmund Burke about the scope of a representative’s rights and duties. Unfortunately, Burke’s idea of a representative’s role has little or no place in modern American democracy.

In his famous 1774 “Speech to the Electors of Bristol,” Burke told his constituents that he had not been elected to be a mouthpiece for their opinions and interests. Instead, he said, they had chosen him to use his superior information and best judgment as part of a deliberative assembly charged to act for the good of the entire country. While he would certainly take their views into account, their opinions were only part of the larger picture available to him as a member of Parliament. His obligation, he said, was not to be the voters’ ambassador but to exercise his best judgment for the common good and to convince them, if he could, that he had acted rightly.

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