Political Philosophy....an Adjunct to our Healthcare Discussion

Once again, KC Mulville has postulated an interesting point of discussion for us...concerning the philosophical underpinnings of the country's on-going "Healthcare Debate".  To wit:

In any contract, the chief question is always: did the parties agree to it?

• Sometimes, lawyers negotiate the deals on behalf of clients. When that happens, you have to ask an extra question: Did the lawyers accurately represent their clients' wishes, or did they simply have an agreement between the lawyers?
• Politically, our representatives in Congress are supposed to represent us.
• But here, the Democrats are openly defying their constituents, and are trying to forge a contract among themselves.

Philosophically, this reveals the danger of representative democracy. For practicality's sake, we give representatives the power to make decisions in our name. Now when we give that power to attorneys, we implicitly expect them to use their training, expertise and professional judgment. For the same reason, we almost always take the doctor's advice, on the grounds that he has a medical degree and we don't. We trust them to make decisions in our best interest.

Politicians (most of them are lawyers also) presume that they should be treated as the same kind of experts. They expect to make decisions for us, based on their presumed political expertise. But here we see the flaws in that presumption of superior expertise:

1. Democrats didn't read the proposed bills. They know no more about the issues involved than the public. Arguably, the public knows more.
2. When the Constitution was written, there was no mass communication. Constituents wouldn't know the issues involved. They depended on their representatives because they had limited means to know what was going on in Washington. These days, however, the public knows the issues as well as, if not better, than the congressman.
3. For all the expertise they presumably bring to the table, they are still representatives. Unlike an actual courtroom, the "power of attorney" isn't absolute. If the clients don't agree to the terms their lawyers offer, there is no agreement.

This healthcare debate has uncovered the mechanics of how political systems actually work. I argue that this is a systematic abuse of political power, all made possible because the public doesn't know how our system works.

His premise immediately caught my attention, and a couple of random thoughts:

KC, I'm enamoured of your argument, but I'm not sure I agree with your conclusion.

I have so many thoughts about this that we probably ought to move the topic to the Forums.

Briefly (1) Instantaneous information is a double edged sword; (2) people do know how our system works but have placed entirely too much trust in politicians to do the right thing; and (3) the professional political class is actively abusing their power to see just how far they can go because; (4) people have very short memories.

We agreed it would be a worthy topic of discussion, here, on the Forums.  Again, I would ask that the rules of the Healthcare thread apply....serious comments only, no trolls and no flaming, please.