TOPIC: Some people believe that in order to be effective, political leaders must yield to public opinion and abandon principle for the sake of compromise. Others believe that the most essential quality of an effective leader is the ability to remain consistently committed to particular principles and objectives.
Write a response in which you discuss the extent to which you agree or disagree with the statement and explain your reasoning for the position you take. In developing and supporting your position, you should consider ways in which the statement might or might not hold true and explain how these considerations shape your position.
This issue raises the controversial issue of whether political leaders are supposed to stay adherence to certain principles and goals instead of acting solely based on what the people want. Indisputably, in democracies, the majority of the people are the reason certain political leaders get to run the country, however, there is too much at stake if political leaders yield to public opinion therefore, they should always devote to certain principles and goals for the country’s future.
First of all, we should consider that in the United States, more than half of employees make less than 30K a year. Unemployment has been very hot topic in the elections. Almost all candidates have their plans on how to reduce employment, however, some candidates are willing to sacrifice principles to allegedly create jobs in order to convince the people to vote him.
The country’s funding for preventing the climate change has been one of the main targets in 2016 elections. Right wing politicians think that America has spent too much money on such unnecessary mission which could be used to create jobs instead. When right wing politicians came to power, they not only cut funding for such purpose but also abolish the laws that require business owners to be mindful about environment. The majority of people seem to think that the government funding will be spending to create jobs and businesses will hire more since they are likely to make more money without strict regulations. However, the facts tell us that climate change has serious effects including on weather which eventually hurt farmers as well as businesses. Politicians must respond to facts instead of trying to gain vote on such delicate matter.
Besides, immigration has been also very hot topic in the United States in last elections. Majority of people seem to believe that immigrants steal jobs from citizens and bring crime to the country. Unfortunately, despite research that shows that immigration does not increase unemployment and crime rate in the country. Indeed, just the opposite, immigration boost economy. In the United States, half of high-skilled employees in technology are foreign born. Many successful entrepreneurs like Yahoo’s and Instagram’s founders are immigrants based in America. Also, every year hundreds of thousands start-up is being launched in the United States by foreigners. The further research shows that immigration is good for the economy. Unfortunately, political leaders, despite knowing those facts presented to themselves, are preferring to open a war on legal immigration to please their voters. Such move on reducing the legal immigration would have its negative effects on economy eventually.
In addition, in the United States, the unemployed seem to believe that businesses would hire more if they are taxed less. Political leaders yield to such demand even though research shows that businesses are already taxed less than small businesses and many individual and they are not hiring less employees than they desire because their taxes are too high. Although it has been considerable time that they acquired a major tax cut the unemployment rate seems where it was before the tax cut. Instead, small businesses are having difficulties to compete with such monopoly in the business sector. Eventually, more people are hurt because politicians are doing what would get them elected instead of what is good for the country.
