The president has apparently decided that the magic number for the “surge” is 20,000 and is getting ready for his upcoming speech on the whole issue. Now there’s a lot of chatter in here that just plain infuriates me, aside from the fact that there’s a surge going on at all, things like Bush ignoring the Iraq Study Group’s recommendation to talk to Iran and Syria.

Awful, right? Every time a bipartisan group comes around, he makes sure to ignore it. But no, that’s not the point of this particular article. The focus this time around is something that’s been happening a lot. Namely, this bit on polls and public opinion:

“The president will not shape policy according to public opinion, but he does understand that it’s important to bring the public back to this war and restore public confidence and support for the mission,” [White House press secretary Tony] Snow said.

Listen. The president is not the leader of the country. He is not a man the public chooses to take the reigns of the nation and steer it toward whatever the hell he wants. The president, like all other elected officials, is a man who is (or at least should be) beholden to the people he represents.

We’re a democracy, specifically a republic. This means that we get to vote on stuff, and it means we’re the actual power. The president represents us, that’s why he has to be elected. In a way, elections are a gauge of approval and whoever we approve of the most gets to be in office.

For some reason the right hates polls. They hate the idea that politicians would pay attention to their constituents and then act based on what the people who elected them would like (all while acting based on what they were paid to act on, but that’s another article…). A big criticism of Democrats has been that they don’t act on their conscience, but rather read what the public wants and then they do things.

Now let’s dissect this for a moment. But before that, a quick reminder of our president:

04/10/06: My third advice is, don’t make decisions on polls. Stand your ground if you think what you’re doing [is] right.

According to Woodward: Late last year, he had key Republicans up to the White House to talk about the war, and said ‘I Will Not Withdraw Even If Laura And Barney Are The Only Ones Supporting Me.’ Barney is his dog.”

Two brief quotes that should, hopefully, keep fresh in your head that President Bush does not give a rat’s ass what the American people think. Now, he had to campaign twice, he has to play politics for the elections, but to listen to him, you’d think that it’s all a ploy to get the votes, and to resume one’s selfish ways once in.

This is, frankly, unacceptable. Now I understand that the American people can’t be put directly in charge of everything since that would negate the purpose of leaders, but that doesn’t mean the opposite end of the spectrum is acceptable, either.

We elect our leaders in order to make them get done what we want one. We elect them because we think they represent our interests (hence the term for some of them). This is why we elect them at all, this is why we have two houses of Congress, and this is why the terms are set up as they have. The Founders of this great nation went to painstaking lengths to make sure that the people were the real voice of the country, and that no voices outweigh other voices.

Ours is a president who demonstrates no loyalty to his people. He treats his position as that of a leader who just has to convince everyone to sit down and shut up. He knows what’s best, not you, and even his campaign in 2004 was one of scaring you into entrusting him rather than convincing you of his ideas.

He frames this in terms of “effectiveness”, that if he listened to polls he wouldn’t be an effective leader. Now that’s frankly illogical from a purely technical standpoint. If you’re leading a line of people, unless you pay close attention to what they’re doing and what they’re saying, they won’t follow you.

But more directly, it underscores the democracy part of our government. The only reason he is the president is because of polls. Because our system is one that thrives on the will of the people, he is president. Yet for some reason he ignores that, nearly scoffing at the concept of listening to what the people want.

On one hand he crows about the will of the people when it suits him, but when they disagree he shrugs it off as unimportant. When he hears that the Iraqis want to be helped he listens, when he hears that the Americans don’t want their children dying he doesn’t.

The president has always envisioned himself as a great leader, the kind of movies and books, who get put on dollar bills for their triumphs, yet the reactions to his actual policies and what he has done are largely negative.

How poetic is it, perhaps, that Bush’s sole two moments in his presidency that led to his approval rating increasing were the falls of something monumental? When the twin towers fell on his watch, his approval rating jumped to 90%, and then to 70% after the fall of Saddam Hussein.

Their fall, but not the rebuilding. There has been no photo op of President Bush in front of the rebuilt monument where the twin towers once stood, nor one of him celebrating in the rebuilt Iraq with the liberated Iraqi people. Not because the numbers didn’t go up after these events, but because they never happened at all.

Similarly, the man’s approval ratings show the two large spikes and then a fall that shows no signs of salvage. Like the World Trade Center and the nation of Iraq, Bush’s presidency toppled and has not been repaired. And just like those two, Bush shows no interest in doing anything to change this, or perhaps doesn’t know how.

Maybe that’s why he doesn’t pay attention to polls. Not because it has anything to do with his stubborn belief in what he’s doing, or because he doesn’t care about the people, but because when he sees those polls he’s reminded of his failures. He wants to believe that he’s a great leader, but the polls come in and tell him he’s not, and burying his head in the sand is the only way for him to cope.

On the plus side, in another few months his numbers will likely sink low enough for him to see them down there. Maybe then he’ll do something about it. I doubt it, though.