86 Some people believe that government officials must carry out the will of the people they serve. Others believe that officials should base their decisions on their own judgment.

Government decision-making plays an important role in the society, and the decision-making of officials are determined by a variety of factors. Should government officials make desicions based on the will of the people they serve, or base their decisions on their own judgment? The answer to this varies if you infer to different academic views. From my perspective, government officials should make decisions on their own judgment based on the will of the people.

On one hand, I concede that government officials are elected by the demand of its people they serve, and therefore officials should behavior and think in accordance with the will of those people. While Abraham Lincoln has perished in history long ago, we could still see every generation of government officials encourage themselves tirelessly at their position, fulfilling prestigious Lincoln’s motto “of the people, by the people and for the people. The governments’ central role in regulating national affairs obliges officials to give consideration to common citizen’s benefits. Officials are simultaneously citizens themselves, which gives them unique insight and understanding of citizen’s requests. Those officials make significant decisions with considering the pubic desire not because they derive their political power from the public.

On the other hand, government officials are employed by the nation system, and naturally administrators should stand at the side of whole country and represent national interest and serve their own nation but not individuals. Thus, it is the officials’ responsibilities to make right decisions within the scientific evaluations and predictions on their judgment and political knowledge. For example, as the price of petrol is increasing, more and more people call for declining the price. But if the price of oil is getting down, more citizens will desire to purchase private cars and be unwilling to take subway or buses, thereby leading to traffic jam and more serious pollution of the air. Therefore, the government officials should make momentous decisions on their judgment as they have known more and deeper than common people do.

Rather, I would like to view the policy-making process of government officials as a continuum that includes public voices and official’s individual judgments. We applaud these policies because they stemmed from comprehensive concerns of what would benefit the nation overall and the will of citizens. Roosevelt’s New Deal sufficiently exemplifies my argument. Had Roosevelt not subordinated capitalist interest and conjured up a marriage between market economy and government regulation, current Americans might still be suffering from the effects of the Great Depression. Even though Roosevelt implemented a series of policies in spite of business opposition, we do not judge him to have acted autocratically or irresponsibly. In this way, Roosevelt well embodies an efficient leader who struck a harmonious balance between the public’s wishes and his own decisions.

In sum, the insightful officials should collect comprehensive information from the mass and try their best to take the interest of the majority into account, and finally make a wise decision according to their own judgment on the actual conditions.