Public Opinion Polls and Democracy

Technorati Tags: democracy, public opinion polls, Iraq war

Dan Riehl on the new Rasmussen Poll showing that 57% of Americans think the U.S. should leave Iraq immediately, or set a firm deadline for doing so:

Public opinion polls do not a prudent national strategy make, let alone one that deals with fighting a war. The Founding Fathers knew that. If they didn't, we wouldn't have the representative form of government we do. We'd have a pure democracy, instead.
[...]
What America needs now is leadership, not another opinion poll. As Independent Democrat Senator Joseph Lieberman pointed out today in the Washington Post, there is only one choice in Iraq. Whether the average Joe on the street gets that or not, is irrelevant.

Linked at Memeorandum.