Is Obama Principled or Pandering?

President Obama told ABC's Diane Sawyer that "I'd rather be a really good one-term president than a mediocre two-term president." "You know, there is a tendency in Washington to believe our job description, of elected officials, is to get reelected. That's not our job description," Obama said. "Our job description is to solve problems and to help people."

If the only reason people think the job of a politician is to get reelection is cynicism, then Obama is making a strong, principled statement here. However, he is not a king. Obama is serving in a representative democracy, which means that Obama's job is to solve the problems that the voters want him to solve, not the ones that he, in his apparently lofty wisdom, decide need to be solved. Therefore, his job is to get reelected, because in a democracy that is ultimately how the people tell Obama whether he did his job or not.

Obama campaigned on a staggering multitude of issues, promises, and expectations, many of which were contradictory, and therefore went into office with a multitude of constituencies. He was expected to solve a lot of problems and help a lot of people, at no cost to anyone. During his time in office, he has inevitably let people down, and turned his back on many constituents. If Obama is being principled now, which constituencies' principles is he standing on, and which is he rejecting? On health care reform, he has chosen to pander to the political left, while simultaneously, and quite obviously, telling independents to take a hike because he intends to get it done before they can vote him out of office.

Think of it as a 'principled' way of flipping independents the bird.