The basic question (or comment i guess) that Silver poses is whether Arlen Specter's party switching and predicatable voting patterns (siding with Republicans when he has a republican challenger and with Democrats when hes up against a democrat) are necessarily a bad thing. The money quote is, "Arlen Specter is either just about the best reflection or the worst reflection on the state of our Democracy -- it's just hard to say which one."
I guess I'll leave the obvious comment aside that one would hope that senators act in the interests of voters as opposed to following the political winds, but i do wonder if there is a problem here at a deeper level of democracy. If the point is to give the voters what they want as a representative, Specter has seemed to do a pretty good job of it; he's been in office for a long time and sits on fairly important committees. He keeps getting reelected as well, and the way he's done it seems to be to protect his right and left flanks with votes for a short period of time (we'll see if his new found liberalism sticks around after his primary challenger is wiped from the field). This voting on both sides of the issue, however, makes Specter a fairly moderate voice in the Senate, something that has gotten rarer over the past few years (especially when he was still in the republican party). Some might say that there are already too many moderate democrats in the senate, but I tend to prefer moderation to the extremes on both ends. He's also seemed to have chosen the right side of a lot of issues over the years for his constituents, regardless of his party affiliation. He doesn't seem to pander to either side too much (unless we count his voting pattern itself as pandering). He's not wedded to a specific ideology, except maybe getting Arlen Specter reelected.
So I guess the question stands: is Arlen Specter a good or bad example?
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I'd say he's a rotten Senator with good results. Although I detest the "politicians as leaders" view of democracy (we choose our shepherd), I do think that voters need to know who they're putting in office. Changing one's mind over the course of a career is fine, but when the changes get compressed into election cycles, it's just sleezy. And it's not as if he a populist, giving the people what they want and neglecting enlightened self-interest, but he just gives the relevant voting blocs what they want for *the next election*. Still, this strategy seems to have led him down a pretty tolerable path, and it's hard to argue with proof in the pudding. I wouldn't trust him to watch my stuff at the airport, though.
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