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Career politician' is not necessarily a dirty concept |
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Written by Byron Williams
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Tuesday, 15 March 2011 |
 To be called a "career politician" is an unambiguous pejorative.
To quote the Warner Bros. cartoon character Yosemite Sam, "Thems fightin' words!"
No one wants to be a career politician because it suggests that such longevity eventually causes one to abandon principles. Intoxicated on fame and power, the career politician will eventually become inordinately preoccupied with re-election, making him or her more beholden to campaign contributions than the people's business.
I would agree that there is some truth to that notion, but reality strongly suggests it's never that straightforward.
In California, we know how to deal with the career politician. In 1990, to put an end to the legislative career of Willie Brown -- who had been the longest serving Speaker of the Assembly in state history -- the voters passed Proposition 140, enacting the most draconian term limits in the country.
Neither California's institutionalized deficits nor its predictable gridlock have improved since Prop. 140 was passed. The evidence clearly indicates the opposite is true.
Prop. 140 has created a system that has robbed the Legislature of its institutional memory. In doing so, it has weakened the body trusted to do the people's business and at the same time strengthened special interests of all stripes.
The term career politician has enhanced the cynical vision of politics that leads individuals running for Congress to embrace a contradictory platform professing dislike for Washington, but a willingness to put up with its drudgery for the sake of the people.
Is it really that simple or is whining about the "career politician" all we have time for between our daily doses of Lindsay Lohan and Charlie Sheen?
Are there individuals who stay too long in office? Absolutely. But are they the rule or the exception?
Whether one serves at the local level, in the state Legislature, Congress, or the White House, that person enters a system that is inherently more immoral than he or she is moral.
The corrupting nature of power is open to all regardless of the time served in office.
Elective politics is the only position I know where experience is viewed as a negative.
Longevity in office is how trust is created among colleagues to forge difficult compromises. It is how elected officials gain and refine their expertise on the complex issues that face the country.
Former Georgia Sen. Sam Nunn spent 24 years in the Senate and, in doing so, became one of the foremost authorities on national defense.
In his 47 years of service, though unabashedly liberal, the late Sen. Ted Kennedy worked with a number of Republicans to find compromises to pass laws that addressed AIDS, disabilities, cancer research, mental health and education.
Longevity is also how politicians learn the human aspect of those on the opposite side of the aisle.
But therein lies part of the problem, the rancor in our current discourse demands that our opponents have no human side or any legitimacy in their political perspectives.
It is hard to imagine in 2011, but in 1963, Sen. Barry Goldwater and President John F. Kennedy actually contemplated flying together from town to town and debating each other face-to-face on the same stage.
Goldwater later added that the debates "would have done the country a lot of good."
The collective challenges in Washington and Sacramento are far greater than any particular ideology. The career politician is not our problem as much as our desire to place our orthodoxy above all.
Could it be that we are more concerned that the problems are solved in a manner to our liking than having the problems solved? Or have we simply bought in to the perfection of our ideas?
It was the policy of a Democratic president who raised taxes, enacting the last policy that improved the fortunes of Americans across the board. But any mention of a tax increase today is unimaginable.
How quickly we forget that it was tax cuts ad nauseam and increased spending by the previous administration and Republican-led Congress for six of its eight years that contributed greatly to the current deficit.
The term career politician is but one of a series of red herrings designed to inflame the current dysfunctional discourse, ultimately serving to diminish our shared responsibility to remain an active and engaged citizenry.
As George Bernard Shaw correctly observed: "Democracy is a device that insures we shall be governed no better than we deserve."
I would not want to be the one who asked Shaw: "So how are we doing right now?"
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