Saturday, January 23, 2010

"Torture for Most People"

As someone who once worked in politics, I concede that these thoughts by Tyler Cowen rang true:

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. ...

Hat-tip: Sully

2 comments:

Fran said...

It sounds a little like working for church...

Brant said...

I agree with the assessment that you have to stop saying what you think. Well, you do if you want to be elected, and to most of our politicians, getting elected - or re-elected - is so much more important than doing or saying what they really think is right. It's almost total lockstep for the Republicans and Democrats. And they do this because voters have become, in general, so easily led and, like the lawmakers, so polarized into "red" and "blue." It's gotten to the point where the Republican Party, in most cases, would shun a candidate who holds dear all of their key platform planks, but favors abortion rights. The Democratic Party, meanwhile, can't accept someone who is anti-union. It's ridiculous. The candidate is no longer judged on the totality or his or her beliefs or the qualities he or she might bring to the office. A couple of people have asked me why I don't run for office, and I told them I'm not able to hold office in Southwestern Pennsylvania. They ask why, and I tell them that as an athiest and a supporter of gay marriage, I couldn't get elected as dogcatcher. It wouldn't really matter if I were the best person for the office, those two issues would make me unelectable.