Many have drawn attention to the fact that some candidates in this presidential race have in the past voted for issues that conflict with their personal views.

Tim Kaine, for example, erstwhile governor of Virginia, voted to support continued use of the death penalty in the commonwealth, as well as support for Planned Parenthood and other women’s reproductive services even after identifying himself as pro-life and anti-death penalty. This conflict has drawn fire from a number of values-based voters. Is this moral? Is this dichotomy something we’d like to see in a candidate for high office?

If a tiny number of leaders make decisions on their own whims rather than governing in the manner they promised if elected, is that democracy? Your deeply disappointed 5th grade social studies teacher says, it is not. Is it a republic? No, they shake their head mournfully, wishing you had paid better attention. Is it an oligarchy? It is, they nod enthusiastically.

“What’s an oligarchy?” you ask, much to the disappointment of your social studies teachers. It is rule by a small number of people with no representation from the masses. In the past they have typically given rise to systems of aristocracy. In the modern era, we see more representation of raw wealth from business tycoons. This is the kind of thing that gets Marxists to foam at the mouth.

If America was an oligarchy, then it’d be acceptable for Tim Kaine to make decisions for his state based on his Catholic background. Is America an oligarchy? America is not an oligarchy, your now-incandescent social studies teacher says, it is a representative democracy. At least, in theory, the Bernie Sanders crowd yells in the distance.

It’s nice that Tim Kaine, for example, seems to have some Catholic morals that he holds reasonably tightly in his personal life. It makes a pleasant change from some of the creatures that run for higher office.

What’s even nicer is to see Kaine set his morals aside and do what the voters elected him to do. He doesn’t like it, but like a college senior grinding through his last semester, he does the job anyway.

The reason officials like Kaine are elected into office is not because the American people think they have the best reasoning and opinion on issues. Rather, it is because the American people believe that these officials are trustworthy enough to uphold the stance of the general public.

Such officials are there to execute the spirit of the elections, if not the letter of it. We should hope that that is the measure of the officials we elect.

In the end, officials will do what they will (or what they won’t.) They’ll follow our whims or their own will — the decisions of the people or of their own selves. But we should sincerely hope that those we elect in the future have the integrity and honor to do what we elected them to do and not the cowardice to simply take advantage of their elevation to office to do as they please.