Ayotte Didn’t Know
Wendy Thomas’s grave and lofty indictment (Commentary, Feb. 7) of Gov. Ayotte for “not knowing” whether ICE was planning a detention facility in Merrimack sounds like attack-dog politics as usual. How could Rep. Thomas be unaware that the president does his best not to let anyone know about anything. He’s said he likes to keep people guessing because that makes it easier to get things done. And experience has shown us that he often doesn’t know, himself, from one day to the next what he intends.
What Thomas and Ayotte can legitimately be expected to know is what we, the people, think about such things.
Rather amazingly, since it often appears that politicians really don’t want to know what their constituents think, Rep. Goodlander circulated almost at the same time an email questionnaire that simply asked, yes or no, what we thought of the plan to build such a facility. What a hopeful sign that was! The weak point of our form of democracy is that there is no mechanism such as a national referendum to quickly and simply let our legislators know what we think en mass about things like abortion, undeclared wars, Gaza, Ukraine, kidnapping foreign leaders and so on. So called opinion polls are too limited and have frequently shown themselves to be off the mark.
Everyone also knows perfectly well that the president doesn’t care one bit about what anyone else thinks, that his own thoughts are his only “moral compass.” But if faced by a sizable majority consensus against him, he might back down, particularly if he’s thinking about altering the Constitution to run for a third term. Similarly, such a mechanism for making a consensus known would tend to drive money out of politics. Donors won’t donate if they see that their position is likely to win anyway, nor when it’s clear they’re backing a losing horse.
Rep. Goodlander has opened the door. If you haven’t been contacted by her, go to her website and express your opinion. Don’t wait for hell to freeze over.