Congress and Popular Opinion

I'm not going to cast vote in the poll because I don't think there's a clear-cut answer.

In some cases the representative should bow to the will of the electorate, but in other cases where the will of the electorate is not in the best interests of society, I think the representative should show leadership by explaining his position and voting accordingly.

Those are honest, straightforward answers that you or I would use as a solution. Personally, I'd go ahead and vote the way my conscience said to unless I got a huge backlash from my constituents. In that case, I would abstain from voting on the bill as there is no way I would vote for something I didn't agree with. Congressmen aren't quite so simple, though. A real Congressman would do something more like the following if they were opposed to a bill that their constituents wanted:

1. Look to see if the bill is likely to pass or not. If it is unlikely to pass, vote for it. You will get what you want, which is the bill failing. The constituents will get what they want, which is you voting for the bill. If the bill looks like it is going to pass by a wide margin, vote for it anyway. You weren't going to affect the bill's passage with your vote, but your vote for the bill will help you to get re-elected. Remember that in politics, getting re-elected is Job #1. If the bill looks like it could go either way, now is the time when you have to get sneaky to try to get it to fail while still appearing to support it (and pick the options below.) Note that most of them involve getting others to do things that help you such that it doesn't look to your constituents that you tried to sabotage the bill. Yes, politics is that sleazy.

2. Try to cut deals with Congressional buddies of yours that were going to vote for the bill to vote against it. This will allow you to vote for the bill and please your constituents while actually serving your conscience by getting the bill defeated.

3. Get a fellow Congressman or -woman to get an amendment or other text in the bill that would make the bill unpalatable to your constituents. An example would be putting an amendment repealing the oil drilling bans off the West Coast in a bill that makes incandescent light bulbs illegal. The environmentalists would love the original bill but would hate the amendment more than they would the original bill, so the original bill loses its original support and dies.

4. Get a fellow Congressman or -woman to put something that you actually want put into the bill so that you can in good conscience vote for it. An example would be if you are a conservative elected from a liberal district and your constituents want you to vote for the Senate version of H.R. 3200 but you can't stomach the thought, get a tort reform amendment put in the bill so you can better stomach a vote for the bill.

5. Try to convince your constituents that they do not really want to support the bill by airing political ads and holding public lectures where you try to sell your ideas to your constituents (aka "town hall meetings." )

I am sure there are a lot more ways to do this, but I am not a politician and don't know how deep the cesspool of political sleaze tactics is.

That is indeed a tough question, and so I guess it ultimately comes down to the lawmakers' conscience. But I think MU_Engineer is much more astute in that appearances are more important than principles for most politicians. Unfortunately it's the nature of the game...

The other question is if a majority of the constituents actually do feel strongly, or even have any idea what is in the bill. Sometimes a vocal minority (and/or the media) will stir up controversy or misrepresent what a bill actually is. Most people don't read bills and only know as much as they hear from others. I think the true problem is that too much legislation is passed in the first place, and no one really knows exactly what is in it.