Are those drawn to a career in American politics chiefly interested in power?
A couple weeks back Tyler Cowen was pondering this question on the blog, Marginal Revolution (it’s a great read, which I encourage you all to check it out). I think it’s a pretty fascinating question and one Slog readers will want to weigh in on.
Cowen’s reasoning:
Political jobs would be torture for most people. You have no freedom. You are underpaid and over-bugged. You lose a lot of your privacy. You have to stop writing emails or saying what you think. You don’t get to read many good books or go for many quiet walks. It’s hard to be a non-conformist. And so on.
Yet it’s really hard to get top political jobs. So who gets them? People who truly, deeply love the power.
This is a pretty disturbing concept to me. I’d certainly prefer to think that there are many politicians who run for election because they think they can do the job better, and more justly than the current officeholders. Politicians who have ideals and policy ideas they want to see advanced for the good of the underprivileged, children, puppies and so forth. I realize there are also people like Harold Ford who seem to be willing to do and say anything to get elected. But again, I’d prefer to think there are significant numbers who aren’t. (I also realize that idealist candidates often have to make compromises with the political reality and institutional structures they find themselves in—I don’t think that makes someone like, say, Mike McGinn any less of an idealist.)
At any rate Cowen has some thoughts on addressing the power motive:
One implication is that paying politicians more, and giving them more privacy, would lead to less craven behavior. (Although I personally don’t like the current bill, the D. refusal to pass it is sheer cowardice.) There would then be less selection for the “power addiction” and perhaps more principled behavior.
I’m not quite sure how we would go about “giving politicians more privacy”. And I’m not sure if paying them more will really bring in a higher class of candidate. I doubt taxpayers would ever want to pay their elected leaders a salary that could rival what the private sector has to offer. Nor am I convinced this would necessarily select those interested in “more principled behavior”. But it’s an discussion worth having. What do you guys think?
i think you have a weird last name
It’s Harold Ford, not Henry Ford.
Term Limits. That is all.
Yes, they’re only interested in power. Next question?
I’ll certainly go read the link and weigh in, but at the outset I’m just glad something has brought this concept to your attention.
Sambone–Thanks for pointing that out. Methinks I’ve been reading too much early 20th Century industrial history.
Bankers. Get paid more and have tons of privacy. And they are all assholes. I don’t think the idea would pan out.
cross posted from “Fuck John McCain”:
To over simplify, there are two types of politician.
One is the type that votes with the courage of their conviction, regardless of how it effects their career. That type is highlighted in JFK’s masterpiece, “Profiles in Courage”. Oregon Sen Wayne Morse, for instance, who was one of only two senators voting against the Golf of Tonkin Resolution. Or TX Gov Sam Houston, who opposed secession. Both lost their offices, as a result.
The other type are those that change their positions every time there is controversy or a slight shift in public opinion. They will do whatever it takes to further their careers and to maintain power.
An example of this type of politician was Alabama Governor George Wallace. At the beginning of his career he was known as being fair and being a moderate on race matters, but, after losing his first bid for governor to a man supported by the KKK, he declared that he would “never be out-niggered again.”
Jake-
any luck organizing The Stranger staff?
And what’s wrong with power?
I want power so that my gay and lesbian friends can have the right to marry.
The civil rights movement wanted power to change Jim Crow laws. The labor movement gained power to create the 8 hour day and labor workplace safety laws. Women gained power so that they can have access to jobs, reproductive healthcare, better marriage laws, etc etc.
Power is good. Empowerment is good.
Greed, on the other hand, is evil.
I agree that power is a good thing and that it is needed in order to enact any sweeping societal change. But I think the argument here is that many politicians want power for power’s sake more than they want to change things, more than they want to get Bill Gates rich.
Wow, I guess I must really be out of it. I thought this was established as Truth years ago!
so naive.
power can be good, and good is good, you want people who know how to use power for good.
the anti power thing is not nonly naive it is a recipe for disaster. part of the solution is to be the change you want to be and go get you some power yourself, perhaps by starting the capitol hill hold obama accountable grass roots group or the wedgewood enviros to make ken jacobsen lose office because he loves cars too much group, and not just drop out and not just puruse naive stupid plans like “let’s search for the especially angelic leaders who ARE NOT INTERESTED IN POWER…that’s how we will finally get power!”
learn to love power dude. stop making “we are not into power” a plan…it’s just so faux it’s stupid.
It leads directly to NOT HAVING AND NOT GETTING POWER AND NOT GETTING WHAT YOU WANT.
“Power, we’re above it all”……good plan. Not.
a big probl. w obama is he had it — great power — and blew it his standing was so great if he had made health care a simple socialist reform he could’ve blown it thru congress changing rule 22 and using 51 votes and filling stadiums in ill. and in. and la. and ma. and ct. and wa. and nm. to get those 51 votes but he AVOIDED HIS OWN POWER.
he’s always searching for an “honest dialogue”….
meanwhile the right makes no bones, their plan is to have the court next rule that all speech can be anonymous too, why do you think they took the washington petition sig. case, this will throw out ALL campaign finance regulations (“disclosure is forced speech, which is against the first amendment!”) and help the corporations and the gop rule over us even more. They seek and plan and know how to use power. Our side is caught up in this naive antipower thing.
Maybe this is why the dems are such pussies? Ya think?
This is as tangled as ever, wanting to change things being so often camouflage (even to the political actor) for the mere desire to be the one who changes things.
That candidates so often don’t know this about themselves until they begin throwing their weight around, well, that’s one reason checks and balances are the citizen’s best defense.
Isn’t the real problem at the federal level that neither party actually gives a shit about governing?
The Demonrats were a miserable failure as an opposition party and they’ve been a miserable failure as a governing party, while the Repukelitards have turned into a sadistic, nihilistic death cult.
The country’s real problems are never seriously addressed, let alone solved.
The broader implications are even more striking for a society like ours based on competition: Does a system that encourages looking out for number one as its ultimate ideal assure that the top positions in every field will tend to be disproportionately occupied by sociopaths? If scruples or sane boundaries are hindrances to achieving power, are we guaranteeing that we will be led by the pathologically unscrupulous?
Don’t Seattle City Council members make, like, $100k/year?
Politicians are like cops. Two kinds. One cop goes into the force because he or she likes power, looks forward to wielding power, looks forward to being the enforcer, and not the subject, of the law. Same with a politician: this person desires the power of creating laws, versus living within them. They are both power seekers, and they are more, much, much more common than the other. The other kind of cop/politician genuinely wants the world to be a good place, and enters the field in order to make their positive mark, to maintain order, to help. But eventually the corruption of both systems–government and law enforcement–the bending of the rules, the constant compromising, the willingness to accept the lesser of evils–breaks this person down. They become ineffectual, and at the mercy of those who only joined for the pursuit of power.
The most effective solution would be term limits (preferably combined with mathematical redistricting based solely on population density to eliminate gerrymandering). Even the power mad may act with some principle if they do not have the opportunity to retain power indefinitely by behaving cravenly.
But here’s a news flash… Power hungry people drive themselves to obtain powerful positions with more desperation those are not power mad (and desperation is a powerful motivator). And another thought…. Altruistic principles are not necessarily mutually exclusive to power lust. Most “altruists” believe that they know best, and hunger for the power to compel their fellow men to do as they dictate if only for their own good.
Now… whether we really want politicians behaving in purely principled ways is open to debate… at least the compromise necessary to maintain power tends to moderate politicians.
Seems to me, and this is something that I truly believe most liberals just don’t grasp, that the higher the office, the more likely (to the point of absolute certainty) the office holder is driven by power lust and will completely abandon their principals to maintain power. Everyone seems to readily accept this about the CEOs of fortune 500 companies, but many naively assume otherwise about those who seek to have power even over those CEOs (to actually dictate the actual laws).
politics and politicians have always, mostly, been reflections of the society… it’s the changes in society that are the problem, at root
Dirty Jackass Jake, when are you going to call Liz or Yoko at the Guild and organize the scab Stranger?
The problem with term limits is that you have large groups of new people moving into a very complex job, and then they’re kicked out by the time that they figure out what they’re doing.
Also, as we’ve seen in California, the term-limited members of the opposition party have no compelling interest to do anything but obstruct legislation and make their state ungovernable since they may not be in power when their term is up.
The drawbacks Tyler cites are genuine, but the reasoning is flawed. The plot-hole? Politicians don’t have power. In terms of the number of things they try to affect vs the number of things they successfully effect, their power ratio is lower than almost everybody.
Pols are not normal, but power junkies they are not. They are exceptional in terms of their capacity to disregard feedback from their environments — to keep trying to move things that hardly ever move, and to ignore the horribly things people say about them (and to them) day-in and year-out.
of course all they want is power
The Road to Serfdom spelled this out a loooonnng time ago and I’m sure others did well before that