This may seem like the pot calling the kettle black. I do, after all, make my living writing marketing copy for sports handicappers who sell their predictions to gamblers based in Las Vegas or offshore. Not exactly on a par with nurses, teachers, or police officers when it comes to providing a valuable community service. Although there is one rather significant difference between myself and the political strategists, be they highly successful or mere wanna-bes. That difference is that I don’t fancy myself incredibly important to society or carry on in incredibly self-righteous tones about just how much good I’m doing. We have a job, we do it, and that’s the end of it. Whereas the professional political consultant can be expected to do whatever they can to manipulate an spin the truth whatever way they can, try and jam wedges between otherwise reasonable people, then follow it up with an ode to their commitment to public service. Perhaps the only thing worse was my brief travel through the world of Catholic journalism, where competing publications tried to destroy each other in print, and followed it by in effect signing off with “Sincerely yours in Christ.” As Michael Corleone said in Godfather III, “the further I go up in the legitimate world, the more corrupt it becomes.”
The strategists are just one symptom of an overall cancer, and that’s the professionalization of American politics. Self-righteous speeches aside, the purpose of going into the government really was supposed to be about statesmanship and public service. But when you have people coming right out of college and devoting their entire careers to being in the government, being on congressional staff, running for office or running campaigns, and they become way too vested in, and dependent on the system to keep the best interests of the nation foremost in mind. No one should be naïve enough to think the earliest Founders went into public life solely out of a sense of patriotic duty—power, after all, is the ultimate aphrodisiac. But they had real lives and real jobs outside of politics. They truly came from the society that desired to govern. Such is not the case today.
For this reason, I am a strong supporter of term limits at every level of government. It is most desperately needed in Congress. Here’s where members have enough resources at their disposal to be the most manipulative, and yet are still insulated enough from media attention (as individuals) that they can keep using public money to buy their own re-elections. State legislatures are insulated, but lack the money to do real damage. And the president is so visible that he’s judged on legitimate issues, not how much bacon he can deliver to a certain district or state. However, I still do support term limits at both the state level and for president. In the case of the latter, we have had several excellent presidents since the 22nd Amendment was passes—most notably Ronald Reagan. But it’s dangerous for any society to think that one particular person is indispensable.
As to the problem of the rest of the professional political class, I’m not sure how to solve that. Candidates will always need media advisers and the money will always be there. But if nothing else, maybe we can remove the esteem they are held in, removing one of the core attractions of the job—serving the ego. And then they might be inspired to go and get real jobs. Or at least join the rest of us and not pretending they’re the most important people in society.
Comments