Polls should not decide whether a President stays in office

Thank you for answering: In medias res: "The fallacy in your argument is that there is such a thing as right or wrong opinions, or that there is an absolute "good" and "bad"" Where do I state this? As a matter of fact I do not. The idea of representative democracy is that right and wrong, good and bad, CAN be determined by the majority. However, in contrast to a direct democracy (of which a variant is practiced in the country I live in, namely in Switzerland) the people's representatives, in our case the president, have only to be approved by the people once every four years. The idea behind this practice is simply the following. The majority of people do stay with the same opinion throughout many years. Democrats stay democrats, republicans stay republicans. And then however there is a part of the population that swings either way. These swings can be very erratic and flimsy. Those people for a lack of a general ideology often change their mind on the grounds of how they feel the government has treated them lately. These so called swing voters decide the future of governments and countries. However, the problem is, as I stated above that these swing voters would be moved to vote against a president on a week he decides to do something that THEY don't like. But the same voters could change their mind if after a couple of months/years they see that what the president has decided in general does appeal to them and the consequences of the decisions he made which they thought were bad turned out to be not as bad. (This is all assuming that THEY decide what is bad or good, not me). Country leaders can adjust their policies accordingly. (A true master of this was Margaret Thatcher, she always introduced the unpopular stuff in the middle of her term, and by the time the elections came along, she sweetened her regency again). Therefore I repeat the same argument as above. Leaders have to do unpopular things sometimes in order that the country succeeds and prospers on the long run. Voters should have their say once projects are well on their way, and not when they were decided. This is part of political strategy and democracy! Of course things can turn out the exact opposite: The invasion of Irak was greeted with great enthusiasm as it was decided. Five years later most people agree that this was a grave mistake. Fortunately, come January the nightmare of this presidency will be over. This however does not make my point invalid, the opposite is true: it took a couple of years (for the unfotunately in middle eastern geo-politics uneducated americans )to realize what consequences this decison had. One more general point I have to make: Philosophers distinguish between wishes and will. Will or as Harry Frankfurt puts it ‘higher-order volitions' is something deliberated that extends for a longer period, whereas (first-order) wishes and desires are more momentary. An extreme example of the two clashing is a drug addict that wants to quit. His will is to get sober but his wish is to inject another load of heroin. If he is weak-willed he will succumb to his wishes. If his will is strong he will get sober. Two points can be made following this remark: After four years including a year of heightened attention to the president's achievements (i.e. campaigning) the will of the people is asked. They have time to deliberate about what they REALLY want for the next term. This is at least the hope we have in a democracy. Second, when people are polled they know that their opinion has no weight, so they freely can express their WISHES and momentary opinions. There is no feeling of gravitas that accompanies the walk to the booth and placing your vote. So polls express the people's wishes whereas elections express the people's will. And democracy should definitely be about the latter. This also shows why "It is moot to say that the majority can be wrong, since opinions are relative." is too short-sighted. The relativity of opinions is not challenged in any of these arguments, however, it is not true that I don't think it is wrong that I am lighting a cigarette right now ;-)